Shards of Antiva
by Philosophizes
Summary: After the events in Kirkwall, Zevran returns to Antiva and must come to terms with his past as he decides what to do with his future. In Ferelden, Theron struggles to deal with Zevran's absence, his own feelings, and his position as Arl of Amaranthine. And somewhere, trying to live a life in the isolated corners of Thedas and hide from her past, is Zevran's mother.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello and welcome to the third story in the _Wardens of Ferelden_ series! This story directly follows the events of _Flowers of Kirkwall_ , so if you haven't read that, I'd recommend it. **

**There are also some blanket content warnings for this fic, because it doesn't deal with a lot of _happy_ things for most of the story. They won't be in every chapter, but they feature pretty prominently in some. Here's your list:**

 **-torture**

 **-discussion of torture (adult and child)**

 **-off-screen sexual exploitation**

 **-off-screen sexual abuse/rape (adult and child)**

 **-slavery**

 **-description of child abuse (mental, emotional, physical)**

 **-discussion of suicide and suicidal thoughts**

 **-alcohol as coping mechanism**

* * *

Nehna, daughter of Sora, crafter for Clan Revasina, had had her _vallas'lin_ for three years when she saw Adan Escipo kill a human in Antiva's thin southern woods with a swing of his hatchet, and fallen in love. The city elf was nothing like what she'd been told the flat-ears were- he was beautiful, he was graceful, he had tattoos, he was _deadly._ This was no trembling craven.

When she blurted this out to him, he tucked some of his loose sun-blond hair behind and ear and erupted into pleased laughter, green eyes scrunching up, light skin dappled darker in the shadows of the pine branches.

"And you are very little like the barbarian elves I have been told to expect in the wilderness," he said, and did a strange thing. He took her hand and bowed over it, like the genuflection you made to the most esteemed Hahren and Keepers, and kissed it. It shouldn't have been intimate, but she'd burned with heat all the same, and in her distraction, the only thing she could manage to do was ask what he did.

Adan's eyes had glittered with humor and secrets when he told her he was a woodcutter.

He kept coming back to see her- first under the pretense of hunting for particularly fine pieces of pinewood, but eventually dispensing of the excuse entirely. He couldn't always come, but eventually, when he did, he brought presents. A bag of tiny glass beads in colors she'd only seen in flowers. Lengths of soft leather cured in a way she wasn't familiar with. Spools of gold and silver and brightly colored thread. Bronze filigree bracelets. Knives of a metal she'd never seen or heard of before, better than steel, the hilts inlaid with leaping halla. Wooden rings he'd carved and polished himself. A silk shawl with long fringe that shimmered under its own natural iridescence as well as from the tiny fragments of mica and opal strung onto the threads. A cascade of diamonds and pearls and sapphires to wear around her neck, with matching earrings.

Dalish crafters didn't often work with precious gems, but she still knew that there was no way that Adan would have been able to afford such a thing. When she asked him about it, he smiled like he was scared she'd send him away and admitted that he'd taken it from the bedroom of someone he'd killed. People paid him quite well for that sort of thing, you see.

"So, not a woodcutter," Nehna said after a moment, and Adan relaxed.

"On the contrary," he said breezily. "A woodcutter clears out the deadwood and takes only that which will make the forest as a whole stay healthy. I do the same, only my wood is people."

Nehna didn't dare wear the necklace and earrings around her clan, but she wrapped them up in some of Adan's leather that she had left over and hid them wither other things, careful to pull them out for admiration only when no one else was around.

So, of course, she was eventually caught with them out. She'd already gotten into trouble once for continuing to see Adan and twice for the careful way she'd been carving beads of halla antler and wood for a necklace for him, and it turned out that the third time was the limit. She refused to get rid of his gifts, she refused to stop seeing him, and she refused to take back her words of love.

Her parents turned their backs on her, her friends pretended not to see or hear her, and the Keeper gave her until the evening meal to gather her things and leave.

Nehna did so with her head held high. She walked out of Revasina's camp wearing the gloves and boots and jacket she'd made from Adan's leather and decorated with his glass beads and thread. The silk shawl was tied around her hips as a belt, and the fringe swayed in time with the earrings at her every step.

It was always meant to be a temporary exile, to last only until she came around to her clan's view of things, but Nehna had her pride and knew her mind and kept walking, heading for Rialto. Adan lived in Rialto. She spent the nights on the road finishing the beads she'd been carving him, and the night waiting outside the city gates stringing them on a long length of doubled-over thread. In the morning, she tracked him down to his apartment, and still on edge by the presence of so many people and _humans_ that she simply thrust it at him when he opened the door, saying something about Revasina kicking her out because she refused to stop seeing him.

Adan had taken the necklace, but it seemed that it had been more out of reflex than anything, because he blinked at her a few times before coming up with a real response.

"Then you'd better come in," he told her. "I have room."

That night was the first night they'd done more than kissed, and Nehna was very pleased that this was to be the new state of things.

Adjusting to life in Rialto wasn't easy. Elves could not carry weapons openly unless they were assassins like Adan- Crows. She learned how to hide the short, flat knives he gave her in her boots and under her clothes. It was unfashionable- nearly unheard of- for women to wear pants. She continued to do so anyway, but learned about skirts as well, and could appreciate the way they flared and twirled to Rialto's street musicians at the festivals. No one in Rialto knew El'vhen and the human's Trade marked her as even more foreign, so she learned Antivan. The humans and city elves had no use for most of a Dalish crafter's skills, but wood beads were cheap and city elves were poor, and little wood-carved toys for children could be any parent's weakness. She would sit in the fountain square outside of Adan's apartment building and bring shapes out wood in the sunlight, shavings dropping to the backed clay street beneath her feet.

At first the locals stared at her for her pants and the Dalish aesthetics in the embroidery and cut of her clothes and her clay-dark skin and her _vallas'lin_ , but soon enough the local women would come with their mending or their washing or their child-minding and watch her, sit with her, talk with her. she made friends who would invite her for the warm or cold chocolate drinks out of the nearby rainforests of northern Antiva and Rivain and Tevinter, either over at their houses or out in Rialto's cafés. They couldn't pronounce El'vhen and didn't understand Dalish names, so she became _'Nina Rivasina'_ everywhere but in Adan's apartment.

It was through them that she learned the most about Antiva, Rialto, and humans. She learned how city elves were treated. She learned what most of the family-less elf women here had to do to survive. She learned about how much power the Crows had, how large they were- and most importantly, the way people feared them. She learned sayings and rhymes from listening to the women with the children.

 _One a sorrow, two a decoy  
Three a lost morrow, four a man destroy  
Five in shadow, six will devour  
Seven and sold, eight on the threshold  
Nine with the secrets  
Never to be told._

Nehna learned that the only reason she was living free and healthy and unmolested was because Adan was a Crow, and even elves in the Crows got some respect. No one crossed them.

She confronted him about it the next time he came back from Antiva City and a contract, demanding to know why he wasn't helping others the way he was helping her.

"I can dispense charity," Adan told her. "But I cannot take so many under my protection. Word would get to the other Crows, and I would become a threat, and they would come for me. I am no Master of a House, I am not Grandmaster, I am in no position to insinuate myself up the ranks, and I am nothing but an elf to the humans who run the Crows. A human man with my record could be allowed privileges- control of a neighborhood, a passel of apprentices and junior Crows to manage, a wife-"

At that he stopped as he realized what he'd said, looking mortified. Nehna thought about it for moment, slapped him across the face like she'd been told Antivan women did when their men were making fools of themselves, and then grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him into her face like a proper Dalish.

"Have some pride," she told him. "Do not let the _shem'len_ own you. You kill them for a living, they are no better than you. They are worse, even."

"Nehna, _carina-_ "

"Marry me, you fool."

The next time he came back from a contract, he brought her a gold ring set with a tiny emerald as dark as the pine trees they'd first met in. Nehna gave him a bone carving of Sylaise's hearthfire with a fine dyed leather strip twined through the whorls of flame to wear around his neck.

* * *

They never had a Chantry Sister oversee a ceremony, which was perfectly fine by Nehna and made Adan feel a little more secure. A Chantry wedding would be recorded, he said, and there was no place like Antiva for official recordkeeping. The Crows would have found out within days. Theirs was a common law marriage, which made more sense to her anyway, because what was more declaring someone family than living with them?

Her social status amongst the neighborhood changed again, because they all knew a wedding ring when they saw one. Before she'd a partial outsider, privy to everything and yet strangely apart because of her heritage and uncertain status as a Crow's favorite- but a Crow's _wife_ was something much more. As a married woman, she was trusted to watch the neighbors' children. People came to her for advice. She was asked to assist with the neighborhood charity, since she now had a proper claim on her husband's money and possessions.

She took up fixing people's furniture and small house repairs. They were all wood or clay, and the Dalish _knew_ those. It all turned out to be less complicated than upkeep on aravels, anyway.

Three years after leaving her clan Nehna was twenty-one, married, and pregnant. Adan was in an awful flutter the whole time because Crows of his stature _did not_ have children, or at least none they knew of or acknowledged. Nehna was nervous about giving birth without a Keeper around, but hid it. She had things to do and people to help.

Their son was born in the winter. He had Nehna's darker skin and brown eyes, but his father's hair. She named him Satheraan and Adan smiled and chuckled a little and said that no one else would ever be able to pronounce it. Nehna held her son a little tighter and proclaimed that Antiva _would_ learn how to pronounce it, because it was his name, and as his dangerous and charmingly-convincing father, he was going to make it happen. He could start by getting it right himself.

The winter passed well, and so did the spring. Adan took less contracts, and quicker ones, so he could stay home. He was absolutely enamored with his son, and would spend entire mornings and afternoons just lying on the floor, Satheraan flopped on his chest, talking about whatever came to mind and pretending they were having full conversations. Nehna got the neighbors she associated the most with to say _'Satheraan'_ correctly, and showed him off proudly in the markets and the squares, the silk shawl Adan had given her when she'd still been with her clan repurposed into her son's carrying sling.

Together, they talked about what Satheraan could be like as he grew older. Adan finally told her about his own life, about what it was like to grow up with the Crows, about the training and the constant threat of betrayal and the way that you could trust no one because no one was ever really your friend, or else they were but it always meant less than loyalty to the Crows. Nehna held him while he cried and told him that Satheraan would have a better life, a different life, would grow up to a respectable trade- a secretary, a printer, a glazier, a potter. They had money enough to buy him into a good apprenticeship, and a Crow sponsor could push him past a few of the prejudices that kept humans from taking elf children to their trades. Here in their neighborhood, they were king and queen because everyone was scared of what Adan represented; when Satheraan married, he would be king of his own neighborhood because people liked and respected him for his character.

* * *

In summer, the Crows came.

Adan had gone to Antiva City to bid on contracts, and three nights later Nehna was dragged out of bed and made to watch as they killed him slowly, because he'd dare to have what was not given. The man who was Master of House Escipo held Satheraan like he knew anything about babies and Nehna promised herself in her towering rage as Adan finally screamed that the Crows would not not not not _not have her son!_

Adan died with his eyes sliced open and Master Escipo soothed Satheraan when he woke up to his father's screams and started to cry himself. He rocked her son gently back to sleep as he told her that Adan had cost the Crows the entirety of the value of his training and upkeep with the need for his execution. Everything he owned was now the Crows', with the gracious exception of the clothes she was wearing and what she could take in one bag. Some of the Crows watched her as she packed up her woodcarving knives, a few changes of clothes for herself and Satheraan, and her son's blanket. They didn't let her keep any of the courting gifts Adan had given her, or any of the household money.

They didn't search her, so she didn't have to find out what they'd say about the flat throwing knives Adan had given her, and taught her how to use. She teetered right on the edge of pulling them out and taking at least Master Escipo with her when, once she was finished packing, the Crows escorted her back into his presence and he smiled and named the size of the debt that was still owed on top of Adan's death and the seizure of everything they'd owned. Perhaps the King of Antiva could have paid it back, or the richest merchant houses, she would never be able to.

"Of course," Master Escipo said, and in Adan's voice she would have called it smooth but with this man it was pure slime. "The price of a life can be paid by another's life."

He was still holding her son.

"Mine then," Nehna told him. "Let me leave my son with the neighbors and you can have me."

"Not enough," he said. "But speaking of your son- a Crow is valuable, and one brought up with us even more so. He would pay the rest of the debt in full, and then some. You could keep everything else you have."

They did not get to torment her husband his whole life just to take his son. No flat-ear, no _shem'len,_ would break the sacred line of parent to child. She was Dalish. She knew her history, and she had her pride; and _her son_ would have his.

She held her arms out.

"He's mine."

Master Escipo handed Satheraan back with a sharp-edged smile, and the Crows turned her out in the street.

* * *

The neighborhood wouldn't have her back. She tried taking odd jobs that she could still do while sitting and watching Satheraan, but they barely paid enough and inevitably turned her out when they learned about the Crows. The Crows were always watching, in Antiva, and it was best to stay beneath their notice. Nehna hadn't, and now they would make her pay for it.

Eventually there were no more odd jobs. She turned to begging. It didn't pay enough for consistent food, and every ten days a Crow would come and take whatever money she hadn't spent yet.

Nehna spent an entire day down at the docks trying to convince herself to ask for work for passage, but knew that no one would take a woman with a baby. Then she tried to convince herself to stow away.

She knew that the Crows would find her again, wherever she went, assuming that she was even allowed to get near a gangplank. Even if they didn't live up to their reputation, she would still be as good as dead- a young elvhen woman traveling alone with a baby was slaver bait for Tevinter.

Night fell over the sea, and when the brothel recruiter for the Summer Lily dropped a whole gold piece in her begging bowl and asked if a pretty Dalish woman like herself wouldn't object to making at least this much every night, she listened to him. She thought of the good it would do Satheraan to have steady food and someplace indoors. She thought about how even the money she'd make whoring wouldn't ever be enough to pay off the Crows, but it was the most money she _would_ make, and how living in the semblance of false hope would be better than the lingering, soul-warping despair she had on the streets.

She accepted and felt every Dalish who'd ever live exile her from The People permanently.


	2. Chapter 2

"There's only so many ships that could have left overnight. The Harbormaster-"

"No."

"There's a book, there's _records,_ I'll find out the ship and the captain and what city they were going to port in-"

"No," Theron said again, and adjusted the sit of his armor. It already lay comfortably, but it was something to do. "He told me not to go after him."

"Then I'll go after him _for you!_ " Alistair exploded, and Theron wondered, for a second, what everyone else in the Crown and Lion was thinking, overhearing this. "Andraste's flaming sword, Theron- I'll go after him for _me_ if that makes you feel better! He's my friend too, and he's in no state to be running off by himself!"

He _knew_ that.

"He was _dying_ not that long ago, I can't believe he'd _do_ this to us! He should still _be here_ where Anders can check his health and the two of you could talk everything out and I could be there for both of you! Does he think we wouldn't do that! Does he think we'd just- rather have him gone! We're not mad- well _I'm mad now_ but I wasn't _before!_ So he tried to kill us! It wasn't his fault!"

"He knows," Theron said quietly.

"Then what in the Maker's name was he _thinking!_ " Alistair demanded, then took another look at Theron's expression and sighed, anger draining. He ran a hand through his hair.

"I'm worried about him, and this hurt you," he said. "I want to get on the next ship to Antiva and find him and, I don't know, punch him in the stomach, sling him over my shoulder, and march him back here."

"Don't," Theron asked him. "Please. If he wants to go, he has a right to go. I'm not going to-"

 _-stand by and let someone steal his choices,_ he'd been going to say, but he'd _done_ that. Ever since the day he'd pieced together the things Zevran told him and the way he reacted to being treated decently and come up with a nightmare of a complete picture, Theron had promised himself that he wouldn't be that. He'd be the sort of person Zevran had never had but had deserved all this time.

And then he'd been too blighted _scared,_ chained up and faced with a Tevinter Magister, to even think about doing anything. Zevran was the one who was deathly scared of being broken and under someone's control again, but _he'd_ been the one to resist, and lost everything for it. It had hurt him, so much. Theron had recognized the impulse that had brought him back to the estate in the morning bloody and strained as a coping mechanism Zevran had been so happy to put behind him, to move past the days when the only ways he could handle his emotions were to kill something or have sex.

No wonder he'd left.

"Not going to what, Theron?" Alistair asked, and he remembered that he had finished sentence.

"I already let the Magister steal his free will," Theron told him. "I won't do it myself."

"That's- agh, _Theron. That's not your fault._ "

"I was the one who was _there,_ " he said. "He trusted me and I didn't protect him."

Alistair was glaring at him.

"Sit," he ordered.

"What?"

" _Sit,"_ he said, pointing to the bed, and Theron sat.

" _First of all,"_ Alistair said. "That wasn't your fault. Second of all, that wasn't your fault. Third of all, running off to Antiva might have been Zevran's choice, but people make stupid choices and you shouldn't always respect them. Fourth of all, even if it _wasn't_ a stupid choice, you love him, and he's not in a good place right now, and you should go get him. Fifth of all, _that wasn't your fault._ "

Theron stared at his hands. He kept remembering the Magister's knife, and Zevran's blood, and that- that _'it's all right'_ when it _hadn't_ been, and wasn't going to be.

"Alistair, when he talked about the Crows, in his not, he said- he said _'we'_."

"He didn't. He _wouldn't._ "

"He _did,_ he-" he couldn't do this right now, they had to go back to the Vigil today and he had to officially reinstate Delilah to the nobility and he had to get the proper entourage together for his visit to Denerim and he had to plan a trip to Hallarenis'haminathe to tell the other clans Sabrae had been found and to get halla for them, but it _hurt_ and he'd never been good at not feeling. "He said _'we'_ when he talked about the Crows, and he's gone back to Antiva, and he said he's sorry and wants to live well but he's gone back to Antiva and he said _'we'_ and he left his Warden armor and he said he's _sorry_ and that I can't help him any longer what am I supposed to _think_ about that-"

Alistair grabbed his shoulders.

"Hey, _breathe-_ "

"He's gone back to the Crows," Theron sobbed, finally giving voice to the fear that had rooted in him when'd woken up to find Zevran gone and only a note without an explanation. "I broke his trust and he's gone back to the Crows-"

"Theron- Theron! Calm down and _listen_ to yourself, you know he'd never- Fen, go get Nathaniel-"

* * *

They were two hours later than expected getting on the road to the Vigil, dealing with Theron's hysterics. Alistair had finally managed to get him to put on a stoic face just until they passed the limits of the city and were out in the farmland. Now they were riding down the Pilgrim's Path, and Theron sat slumped in the saddle of one of the horses they'd borrowed, tired and heartsick.

It was something Alistair had been prepared for, sort of. Kirkwall had been a very straining experience and he'd been fully expecting Theron to have a bit of breakdown about it once they were home and safe, but he hadn't thought that it would happen before they'd gotten back to the Vigil, and _certainly_ not that Zevran wouldn't be around for it.

 _Whatever you're doing in Antiva,_ he thought angrily at his absentee friend. _It had better be_ _ **really**_ _important, and you'd better come back soon._

Part of getting Theron calm enough to be out in public without being the cause of awkward questions had been promising that he wouldn't go after Zevran. Alistair still hated that he'd made that promise, but it had been the only thing that Theron would accept. Most of the time, Alistair quietly thought that it was sweet and romantic how protective Theron was of a man who was eminently capable of defending himself, but dear Andraste there was such a thing as _'taking it too far'_.

A promise was a promise, but it also only meant that _he_ couldn't be the one to go after Zevran.

After they'd arrived back at the Vigil and Nathaniel had settled in his sister's family, Alistair quietly got him, Anders, Mhequi, Rhannur, and Fenris in a room together.

"Okay! Strategy time."

"Normally," Nathaniel said. "I'm completely in favor of our Commander-management meetings, but this one seems a bit fuller than usual."

"That's because Theron's managed to get himself into more trouble than usual," Alistair said. "He made me promise not to go after Zevran, but that doesn't mean that anyone _else_ can't. So you-"

He pointed to Nathaniel.

"-you-"

Anders.

"-and you."

Fenris.

"You all know people of dubious and sneaky character, right?"

"I know few people at all," Fenris told him.

"Well, just Anders and Nathaniel, then. Got anybody you trust enough who could go to Antiva?"

"Not on something this personal," Nathaniel said. "Hunting traitorous banns in Kirkwall was one thing. That was business."

"I have contacts _in_ Antiva," Anders said. "But I don't know any of them _personally._ And they're not really the hunting-people types. Just the opposite, really."

Okay. Not as useful as he'd hoped.

"Could you ask them to keep their eyes and ears open, though?" Alistair asked.

"Just how curious do you want people to _get?_ " Anders asked in turn. "It's one thing for me to write and ask about apostates and Templars. If I write and say _'hey, there's this Crow, elf, so tall, so old, here's a picture of his face'_ , there'll be plenty of questions. Especially in _Antiva._ The sort of people I can write to aren't the sort of people who can ask too hard about Crows."

 _Really_ not as useful as he'd hoped. Zevran was still trying to _hide_ from the Crows, as far as Alistair knew, and asking questions like that wouldn't keep him hidden for long.

Time for plan number two. It wasn't as good as the first one, since it risked more attention on this side of things.

"Then we'll just have to send some of our people."

"I will go," Fenris volunteered immediately. "Hadriana-"

"No," Mhequi cut him off. "Must stay. Have much learning. Look at lyrium, find memories."

"Captain," Rhannur said. "Voshai will go. Know Tevene. He hides from Crows, we speak Tevene, no one thinks _'Ferelden'_."

That was- Alistair was kind of impressed. He'd had the thought, earlier, of trying to wheedle the Voshai into going after Zevran for him, since they liked him so much. It was why he'd brought Rhannur and Mhequi along in the first place, but he was happier that they'd volunteered themselves. It felt strange, asking for a favor this big; and he'd also been worried that the Voshai would stick out too badly. But using the fact that they'd definitely stick out to cover for another sort of foreignness was something he hadn't thought of.

"Really?" Nathaniel asked, obviously not convinced.

"Hey, it's a good idea," Alistair defended him as the two Voshai started talking to each other in their own language. "And so long as he's still hiding, he'll need the misdirection, right?"

"I suppose," Nathaniel said doubtfully. "But _we_ have to be careful about it as well. If they go off right now, the Commander will be suspicious. And we can't send them with anything that says _'Warden'_ or _'Amaranthine'_ , or else no one will buy that the Voshai are Tevene."

"Send Andreas," Mhequi spoke up, breaking from her conversation. "Has most Tevene name, speaks well."

"Just Andreas?"

"Yes. Easier with less. Makes less attention."

True enough.

"So, just Andreas," Alistair agreed. "He's going to need money, and different armor and I'm pretty sure he's got some of those lyrium-work blades the Voshai make, those are distinctive- wait, _should_ he even go like that? I mean, _Crows,_ and _Antiva,_ but if he needs to lay low, he should probably look non-threatening."

"The Crows are powerful," Fenris said. "Antiva has no army, and survives because the Crows would take an attack on their territory badly. Enough Crows will make even a Magister hesitate- twenty or thirty were hired by a lesser-ranked Magister to take out a more powerful one a year before I ran. They succeeded, though at great cost to themselves. I have heard that such losses, on both sides, are the reason that the Crows and the Magisters often prefer to be tolerant of each other, as an explanation for the Antivan slave trade to Tevinter."

"Antiva sells _slaves_ to Tevinter?" Alistair asked. "What, _officially?_ Not just, like, pirates?"

"Your friend would know better than I," Fenris said. "But the Crows sanction it. I- did I understand correctly, when the Arl-Commander told his story? The Crows bought your friend?"

"They did," Alistair said uneasily.

"If the Crows had not taken him, he would have passed to the Imperium. The slaves who are not born into it are largely taken from Antiva, and those with money for house slaves prefer elves. Children, particularly, can be trained to a master's exact standards."

Alistair had the sudden thought of how Zevran might have been, sold into Tevinter. As much as he could conceive of it, it didn't bear dwelling on.

"Where are you going with this, Fenris?"

"Small deceptions are easier than large ones," Fenris said. "Have Andreas keep his Voshai blades, give him clothes dyed with amaranth, and send him to Antiva speaking of his lord and his captain in Tevene. People will see the lyrium, dressed in the most expensive dye in all Thedas, and the language will do the rest. He will be seen as a trusted armed retainer of some Magister, searching for a valued and prestigious member of his lord's household. Between the assumption and the description of a Crow, no one will wish to ask many questions."

"Wow. You came up with all of that just now?"

"There was time," Fenris told him, tone gone flat. "When such a task would have been my duty."

"It _sounds_ good," Nathaniel said. "But does Zevran even know enough Tevene to pretend to have lived there?"

"Yes," Rhannur answered immediately.

" _And,_ we still have to get it past the Commander."

"Need advice from _sovellirajaa_ for Fenris," Mhequi said. "Ask leave for Rhannur and Andreas. Take ship to Cumberland. Rhannur go home. Andreas take new ship, go to Antiva."

Alistair and Nathaniel looked at each other.

"I think we can make this work."

* * *

As Arl of Amaranthine, Theron had received the accompanying estate in Denerim. Unlike Redcliffe's, originally built outside the curtain wall and then ignominiously folded into the market as Denerim expanded, Amaranthine's estate was in the heart of the city, only a few streets away from Fort Drakon and ten minutes' walk from the palace and Landsmeet.

Usually, Theron just tolerated it. The Vigil was home now, and this was a showpiece house, meant for entertaining guests and otherwise impressing foreign dignitaries and guests of lesser rank during one of the social seasons that he barely attended, being Warden-Commander.

But without Zevran, the Vigil _hurt._ They shared rooms, they shared a bed, and he wasn't going to move Zevran's things out but that just meant that every day he spent at the Vigil, he had to live with the obvious, gaping holes everywhere that he should have been. He'd tried sleeping in his office one night, which hadn't gone well, and then moved into Fen's room to curl up with the mabari. He'd been so tired by nights of bad sleep by that point that he'd overslept, and Alistair had come looking for him. Theron had been expecting a comment about living road-rough again when they had their own arling now, but his friend had just summarized what he'd missed of the morning so far before leaving him to get dressed.

So, for once, the Amaranthine estate in Denerim was better. It was still just Orlesian enough to put his teeth on edge, soaring ceilings and columned arches and whitewashed expanses of wall where there should have been frescos and plaster sculpting imitating stone carvings and symbolic colors and lighting, all of it stolen right out of the Dales, observed by the humans but not _understood._ The estate was a constant low-level grate against his entire being, the cultural knowledge he'd been steeped in since he was born insisting that _those_ colors did not go together, that _that_ carved design could not be used outside of religious purposes, that the light falling like _this_ was meant to be a cultural allusion and that it was an offense to Andruil for there to be physical objects interrupting the sunbeams-

It had kept him from ever staying in the Amaranthine estate for long, and so it meant that Zevran wasn't missing in the same way, here. It was more tolerable.

And being annoyed at the architecture was a good distraction. Maybe, now that he had re-ennobled Delilah and Nathaniel was freed up from running the arling, between the three of them there would actually be time to do things in Denerim. Maybe he could finally justify de-Orlesianing the interiors to himself, despite what it would be sure to cost.

It was just him, Alistair, Fen, Leonie, Kallian, and Captain Alec on this trip. Queen Anora had only asked for Alistair, Zevran, and Leonie or Nell; but Theron had something to bring up to her as well. If it went well, he wanted Kallian and Alec with him for it.

Anora was not amused when he arrived for the wedding meeting without Zevran.

"You're lying to me, Arl-Commander," she said when he tried to skim over the topic by saying Zevran had personal business in Antiva to take care of. "Half a decade of experience and his influence has made you better at it, but your emotions still betray you. Why isn't he here?"

They weren't the only people in the room, Queen and Wardens. Anora had her favorite advisors with her- Erlina, Bann Alfstanna, and Teyrn Fergus. The four nobles in the room represented the entirety of Ferelden's coastline, the Waking Sea Bannorn east through Highever, Amaranthine, and Denerim, then south through Gwaren. Alfstanna, Fergus, Theron, and Anora held, to varying degrees, all of Ferelden's naval power, almost all of its international trade, and a good chunk of its most income-generating farmland and densely-populated cities and countryside. They made a very powerful political and economic bloc, even if Theron was still, almost five years later, desperately playing catch-up when it came to the exercise of such power. This was the faction Anora had put together to secure her own power- the only other ruling woman in the country, who'd been a staunch supporter of anti-Blight measures for the entire near civil war; the only other Teyrn, who'd thrown in with her immediately upon returning home from his Chasind healing; and the Grey Warden who'd secured her throne for her and saved the country- pushing back against the nobles from the time of Maric's rebellion who'd always supported Cailan and the Theirin blood more than her own competency and achievements.

He interacted a lot with Alfstanna and Fergus, at least in comparison to the Fereldan nobility generally. They were friendly with each other. But that didn't mean that he wanted to talk about Kirkwall in front of them, especially when he already just didn't want to talk about it, period.

"Arl-Commander?" Anora pressed, and Theron remembered that she very slightly, subtly hated him for killing her father. She was friendly enough around others, and possibly liked him a little in spite of herself, and _definitely_ liked Zevran; but the initial combination of _'left to torture in Fort Drakon'_ and _'killed my father'_ was hard to overcome.

"There was a blood Magister in Kirkwall," he said. The barest explanation was all she was going to get, especially asking like this. "It didn't go well."

Her continued look at him was a silent _'And?'_ and his steady meeting of it was _'I'm not saying anything more about it.'_

Anora held it for a few more moments before speaking again.

"If you need royal backing to lend weight to a request to one of the Circles-"

A sympathetic offer with a political edge, he'd learned to catch those now, at least sometimes. She did care enough about Zevran to help him get a spirit healer from Kinloch Hold or Jainen, but the implication that Theron wouldn't be able to do it himself was supposed to be an insult, given his contacts.

"The Wardens have our own mages, Your Royal Highness," Theron told her. "And our own healers. They did what they could. He's gone to Antiva."

A silent assessment, and she decided not to push any further.

"And when will he be back?"

It hurt, it _hurt-_

"We don't know."

"Unfortunate," Anora said. "I would have liked to have his advice."

"You got it," Alistair spoke up. Theron was glad he had. He had no idea why Anora had asked for one of her least-politically-fortunate subjects to come to a meeting about her second marriage, but it said a lot about Alistair and how far he'd come from begging not to be made King that he'd step between him and Anora. Theron was proud of him, under the relief of being able to stay silent for a while and focus on ignoring the curious looks he was getting from Fergus, Alfstanna, and Erlina. "He _did_ see your letter. Unless you want to marry Crows, don't marry into Antiva."

Fergus looked very uneasy.

"What, _all_ of them?" he asked.

"' _Or has close ties to them'_ , that's what he said," Alistair confirmed. "He's said some things about the Crows, and they weren't nice. Anyway, Your Royal Highness-"

He turned his attention to Anora.

"The last the three of us knew, the Crows still have the contract from the Blight on us open; _and_ the one Bann Esmerelle took out on Theron specifically. It would be really awkward if you invited them to court for a chance to marry you and then they tried to kill us to avenge their reputation."

"That could be problematic, yes," Anora said. "Unfortunately, Antiva was also the likeliest place to find a suitable husband."

Alistair looked a little suspicious.

"Just what makes a _'suitable husband'_?" he asked.

"Young enough to be active and virile," she said, staring him down. "Sense enough to know to stay out of my way, and realize why doing so would be beneficial to them. Personable. Lacking in real ambition. Likely a younger son, or one who was otherwise passed over for being… _unsuitable._ "

The silence stretched as they glared at each other.

Leonie coughed discreetly.

"Were you looking to receive advice on Orlais, Your Royal Highness?" she asked.

Anora broke the mutual glaring, but in a way that made it clear that she hadn't given in. Theron put his hand on Alistair's knee under the table.

"Orlais has quite the number of unattached men," she said. "But marrying one could be, let us say, politically distasteful. I will do so if I must, but I would prefer one who was not so…"

She waved a hand.

"Orlesian?" Leonie suggested delicately.

"Quite."

"I can look the list over and tell you what I've heard."

Between the rumor and gossip Leonie dredged up from her memory and the more official information Erlina and Anora herself had already compiled, the list of Orlesians shrunk considerably. It was discouragingly impressive, given that it had been the longest list.

"Who out of these are the _least_ offensive?" Anora finally asked some hours later, rather tiredly.

"Rosaire Desrochers, legitimized son of the Marquis of Emprise du Lion," Erlina told her. "His mother is a commoner the Marquis married after the death of his third wife, and his elder sister's husband is set to inherit the marquisate. The other is Ser Reynaud Yann Fay-Dufort, Arlessa Isolde's youngest cousin. He has no titles but his rank as a Chevalier."

"Then they may begin the list. What of Nevarra?"

Nevarra only had two names.

"Hey, we met that guy in Kirkwall," Alistair said, seeing _'Enoch Van Markham'_. "He's the Warden-Constable of the Free Marches."

"Which would explain why we couldn't find much on him," Alfstanna said, and his name was discarded. A few minutes later, Duke Tythas of Hunter Fell was as well, after Leonie and Fergus traded stories they'd heard about his five deadly mistresses.

The Anderfels had exactly one name: Prince Baldewin Augustin, only child of the King of the Anderfels.

"His father is a weak king," Leonie said. "But people are hopeful about the prince."

"Dual reigning titles could present a problem," Alfstanna cautioned, but Anora had him added to the final list anyway.

The last area of Thedas to consider were the Free Marches.

"I'll say it again, Anora- he's _too_ young," was Erlina's comment about Saemus Dumar, the first name on the _'Free Marches'_ page.

"But we've just opened profitable dialogue with his father about our expatriate citizens," Anora countered.

"It's not worth it," Alistair told them both. "The blood Magister wasn't the only thing wrong with that city. There were demons. And other blood mages. Slavers. Rampant crime. Apparently there are weird cults. We've got some people back in Amaranthine who could write you a whole list of reasons never to go to Kirkwall. You don't want to be involved there for any longer than it takes to get the Fereldans home."

He seemed to realize, when Anora shot a look at him, that he'd spoken as if he was in a Warden meeting. His expression was torn between ingrained deference to the throne and a pure authority-born stubbornness that he was probably only holding onto because it was Anora.

"He's right," Theron spoke for him. "It isn't a good place. We arrived and immediately had to track down a source of the Taint."

Kirkwall and Saemus Dumar were quickly relegated to non-candidate status.

"I'm not sure," Fergus said uncertainly to the mention of Goran Vael. "They just had a coup. That sounds like something we shouldn't get involved in."

"Teyrn Fergus, I'd like to remind you that _we_ had a coup," Anora said. "They even happened in the same year, and furthermore, ours had more factions and came much closer to fracturing the country than theirs did."

"it's just that I've _met_ him, my Queen," Fergus protested. "I don't think he's the sort of person who could pull off a coup. I think someone else did it, and then put him there as a puppet."

"He's got a cousin," Alfstanna suggested hopefully.

"Who's in the Chantry."

"And everyone knows that the Vaels send at least one child a generation just to keep their hands in the Game," she argued. "Lay brothers and sisters from noble families have been released before for marriage purposes. He's very nearly perfect- the middle son, apparently had no ambitions beyond living well, the standard rumors of wild behavior when he was younger before being sent to the Chantry, but nothing of the sort since then. With the coup, he's out of the line of succession, so you get the benefit of a Princely family without the complication of titles."

"Only if the other options prove unreasonable," Anora decided.

There was only one more, now- Maxwell Trevelyan, son of one of the Banns of Ostwick.

"His older sister Evelyn is heir," Erlina said. "The Trevelyans are on good terms with the Chantry and have historically made good marriages. They have family ties in Nevarra, Antiva, and to at least one Magister line."

Everyone looked at Theron and pretended that they weren't.

"It could be beneficial for our diplomatic relations. Public opinion generally presents him as easy-going, without any significant outstanding rumors. He's _almost_ too young, but-"

"How young?" Alfstanna asked.

"Halfway between twenty and twenty-one."

"Men that young have been considered before," Anora said, and Alistair scowled at the tabletop. "Well then. Prince Baldewin, Maxwell Trevelyan, Rosaire Desrochers, and Reynauld Yann Fay-Dufort. If they all prove unpalatable, then we shall see about the other Vael. Erlina, I will need formal invitations- set the date for Wintersend and the spring season. That should be just enough time for the Prince to arrive from the Anderfels."

To Theron's surprise, Alistair perked up.

"We have Wardens who will be leaving for Weisshaupt soon," he said. "If you'd like, they could take it."

"We do?" Theron asked, and then realized that it made him look like an idiot.

"Mhequi was going to ask when you got back," Alistair told him. "She wants to send Rhannur and Andreas home to ask for advice about Fenris. We'd all assumed you'd let them go, so-"

"Of course they can go," Theron said. "And they can take the letter."

"Then the letter can travel with one of my retainers from Amaranthine in the company of your Wardens," Anora said. "It seems appropriate enough for the Anderfels."

That sounded like the end of the meeting, but she didn't dismiss them. She folded her hands on the table and looked at each of them.

"There is other business we will handle in the spring," she said. "We cannot proceed any longer without our Bannorns filled. It is important to continue the line of succession, yes, but it is even more important to continue the _country._ _Everyone_ will attend for the beginning of spring court- yes, _even you,_ Arl-Commander, with Alistair as well. I won't hear of you needing to do Warden business or handle the arling. You just got a new Seneschal, and if you can run off to Kirkwall on a moment's notice you can do everything that absolutely needs doing from Denerim for four months. Others have run their holdings from Denerim for _years._ "

"Why would you want _me?_ " Alistair asked.

"You are one of our Blight Wardens," Anora said. "You survived Ostagar. You fought the Archdemon atop Fort Drakon. You are one of the highest-ranked Wardens in Ferelden; and _yes,_ Alistair Mac Maric-"

He blanched at the official bastardry surname.

"-you are the sole surviving son of one of our most beloved and heroic kings. The Arl-Commander be _the_ Hero of Ferelden, but you are one as well. The two of you represent much of what is good about our national character, and beyond that have an international cachet that none of the rest of us can match. You will _both_ be attending court, specifically for our honored guests. The two of you and Teyrn Fergus, as men of a similar age to the candidates, will be particularly companionable with them. I expect rides in the countryside. Hunting trips. General social excursions, of whatever nature is most agreeable to our guests. Hosting parties at your estates, and late in the season, perhaps your lands."

That sounded complex and mysterious to Theron. He was going to need advice. He needed to talk to Nathaniel.

"As such," Anora continued, back to addressing Alistair specifically. "Out of respect to your service and to the dignity of both our guests and yourself-"

"No," Alistair said very, very quietly.

"You shall henceforth be officially known and announced as Warden-Captain Alistair Mac Maric, Lord of Ferelden, in command of the Grey at Soldier's Peak."

Alistair shot a wild, panicked look at Theron. It was such a… _him_ reaction that Theron had to smile just a little. His friend had gotten better at authority, but there were clearly things that were still beyond him.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't think I can help you with this one."

"You have the winter to put your affairs in order," Anora told them. "I expect you back the week before Wintersend."

* * *

"She _gave me the bastardry title,_ " Alistair moaned on the walk back to the estate. He was doing it both because he was honestly upset, and because his moaning was making Theron smile. That second was very important. "I'm going to sound _so pretentious. 'Hello, Your Royal Highness,'_ I'm going to have to say to Prince Baldewin. _'Yes, you are correct, I'm a Grey Warden. The name's Captain Alistair Mac Maric, Lord of Ferelden. I've stood in the presence of the Urn of Sacred Ashes, defeated a Blight, was one of two Wardens left standing after Ostagar, and I helped kill the Archdemon Urthemiel. What have you done lately? Hunting? That's nice. Let me tell you about the fortress I command. It's on top of a mountain.'_ Anora really _hates_ us, Theron."

"If you really did all that," his friend said, tone _almost_ as mild as it usually was when he turned an observation into gentle teasing. "Then it isn't pretentious. It's tell the truth. The nobility loves this sort of thing, all the titles. I could give you some more, and then we could have an equal number-"

"No one needs _that_ many titles, Theron. You've got almost as many as _Anora._ "

"Only because I have Dalish ones as well," Theron said. "And I can add some new ones. Marethari practically declared me a full _Hahren._ I've been acting as one for Velanna's clan anyway, and now with our third city, we can have truly independent positions again, not tied to a particular clan or those who have forsworn their names to serve the Dalish as a whole. The shems don't know what my _vallas'lin_ mean, so I could put that in there too."

"Theron, no."

"Anora wants us to be impressive," he said innocently. "The more titles you have, the more impressive you are. Do you think I should send an updated list to the protocol officer before or after we leave?"

It was doing him good to hear Theron exercising his subtle paybacks against the system he'd gotten stuck in again. Alistair knew this game pretty well- he still played it sometimes. Be deliberately obtuse, miss the point on purpose or pretend to not understand, and people would write you off.

"If you send it before," Alistair said. "He might come by the estate, and then you can see in person just how badly-equipped he is to handle Dalish titles."

Theron _hmm_ ed like the idea had potential.

"So what did you stay after to talk to Anora about?"

"Oh, I wanted her acknowledgement," Theron said. "I'm founding an order of knighthood."

"Uh, okay," Alistair said, surprised and a bit confused. "Great? But you're an arl. You can just do that. And why?"

"It's polite to inform the monarch before you do it officially, and I'm doing it because I can think of a couple of people who deserve it," Theron told him, and Alistair mentally shrugged. They'd reached the estate and passed through the guards' doors by the front gates. Without riding horses around the city or expecting company, there was no reason to raise the large, heavy portcullis.

Theron stopped in the middle of the courtyard. Alistair only noticed once he was at the main door, and backtracked. His friend was looking very pensive.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm going to need-" Theron gestured around at the bulk of the estate. "Guards, right? Since we're being forced to live here, and host parties, and escort foreign nobility around. And a full household staff. A chamberlain. A steward. A housekeeper. A cook. Footmen. Maids. Hostlers and carriage keepers and probably a bunch of other positions I don't even know about. And I'm going to have to have a retinue from Amaranthine, to reinforce my noble dignity, and _they're_ going to need maids and things. And I don't know _how_ to host a party. Are they going to make me dance? I don't know how to dance."

It was true. Alistair could manage through the very simple court dances, and he could remember one single time that Zevran had led Theron through a waltz, but that had been required participation. Usually, at court parties, Theron sat off at the tables and ate, talking to the particularly solemn and serious banns who no one wanted to socialize with, listening politely to what they had to say about the state of their lands and holdings while Zevran did most of the social legwork with the _'real'_ nobility and Alistair chatted up the lords and knights. It worked because they'd all come together at the end of the evening and make a whole picture of the party.

It was going to be difficult to manage this without Zevran. Theron was not going to be able to step up for the social side of things by spring court, and neither was he, unless they found a deportment master. Maybe Nathaniel and Delilah could stand in for Zevran this time on the teaching front. If not, well, Alistair would join Theron in exploiting a Warden's constant ability to eat and spend what were sure to be full six- or seven-hour night parties steadily working through everything the royal kitchens had to offer. They could do it. You just needed to find the right pace.

"If it's your party, I don't think they can make you dance," Alistair told him. "But yeah, you need to hire a household."

Theron looked around sadly.

"And I was thinking about redecorating, too."

"Why? Looks fine to me."

"But it's _Orlesian,_ " Theron said. "They stole it all from the Dales and did it wrong. I'd be happier if it looked right."

"If it makes you happy you should do it," Alistair told him immediately, seizing on the hint of something like a useful distraction for his friend. A project might be just the thing to keep him from worrying. "And Anora's inviting Orlesians. You could show them how it's _supposed_ to be done."

A fleeting smile crossed his face, but it was wide and genuine, and Alistair congratulated himself for getting it right.

"The plastering needs to come out and everything needs to be repainted," Theron said firmly, apparently settled now on the idea of redecorating in the name of showing some Orlesians what was what. "That's the worst, all the _white._ I want to get someone from the clans who's used to maintaining the murals in the Dales to come do the proper frescos."

"Wait, you do-"

"Of course we do that. We preserve them wherever we find them. There aren't many of them, but if we're going to keep them someone has to go back every couple of years and repaint them. Maybe to save time most of them could be wall mosaics. If the mural crafter sketched it out, a human put install it. That would be faster than doing the entire estate in frescos, and they last longer. And all of the colors are wrong, generally. Things will need to be reupholstered. Maybe we can exchange furniture."

"Sounds good to me- I can ask around about who to get for the interiors," Alistair promised. "You find your Dalish muralist and then things can get started."

"Then I should go south right after this," Theron said. "So everyone has as much of the time before Wintersend as possible. Could you find Alec and Kallian and have them come to the office?"

That was easy enough. Leonie had gone out to the city after leaving the palace to get food for the night, so they'd be the only other people in the estate. Theron was impressing his seal on the bottom of some pieces of parchment when Alistair escorted them up, tagging along out of curiosity.

"These are for you," Theron told Alec and Kallian, handing them each a stamped and embossed leather scroll case. Alistair had to raise his eyebrows at that and give Theron a questioning look. They were official Amaranthine scroll cases, the leather tinted purplish with the arling's dye and the amaranth flowers picked out in gold. "The ceremony will be later, in the Vigil, once I've had the chance to give the other guards who volunteered in the tent city during Caron their letters, and Wade is finished with the armor commission."

"Arl-Commander?" Captain Alec asked.

Theron turned one of the parchments around.

"A letter patent of accolade," he said. "For public posting. It establishes the Silver Order of Knighthood with the adoubement of its first two members."

" _Holy flaming shit,"_ Kallian said, and then clapped her free hand over her mouth in mortification.

Theron just smiled at her.

"For outstanding service to the arling in its time of need, Ser Alec; and for my life in Kirkwall, Ser Tabris. Everyone else involved in both your efforts were Wardens, and I can't do anything more for them. But you, I can. Thank you for what you've done."

"I-" Alec said. "I- thank you, Your Arlship, Commander, I- I should go write my family-"

Theron nodded, silently dismissing him, and Alec retreated from the room, flustered.

Kallian was still standing there, frozen.

"Ser Ta-"

" _Why,"_ she blurted. "Ser, I don't mean to- this is a real honor but I really didn't _do_ anything-"

"You nearly escaped the Tevenes without any backup," Theron interrupted her. "If the Wardens hadn't realized we were missing yet, you would have been the one to inform them and lead them to our rescue. I know I wasn't really- properly present for that, but when we were packing to leave Kirkwall, Zevran told me that you deserved a promotion. I trust him."

"I'm not sure this is what he meant, Ser."

"Well, it's what _I_ mean."

Kallian swallowed heavily.

"Arl-Commander," she said, visibly steeling herself, and Alistair's attention sharpened. "Your Arlship. I feel like- I should tell you, before you post those-"

She glanced down at the letters patent on his desk.

"- _I'm_ the elf who killed Vaughan Kendells and his guards and his friends."

Theron was clearly trying to remember where he'd heard the name before, so Alistair stepped in a provided it.

"Son of the old Arl of Denerim."

"Oh," Theron said. "Did he deserve it?"

"He was a filthy rapist with filthy rapist friends who thought it would be fun to kidnap me and my wedding party because my cousin knocked him out with a wine bottle."

"I'd say you deserve a knighthood just for that," Theron told her, and Alistair desperately wanted the rest of this story, it sounded like Kallian had made a very big and very bloody impression. "But I can't put that in the letters."

He handed her one of them.

"Ser Tabris, if you'd like to be of immediate help, the Queen has ordered me to attend court for the spring. I need a household staff. I'd like to hire out of the alienage. Do you think you could find someone with enough skills to be chamberlain? I'll let them hire their own staff."

Kallian clutched the scroll case and the letter.

"I know somebody," she said. "Who would _really appreciate_ the ability to boss around drunk nobles."

* * *

She had to take a moment, when she went back to her room to safely stow her copy of the accolade, to cover her face with her hands and scream.

She'd been elevated to the nobility. The lowest rung of the nobility, but she was _in the nobility._ She was in the part of the nobility whose express purpose was to be very good at fighting and killing things in the name of defending their people.

Ferelden now had two elven nobles, and both of them were fighters. Her and the Arl-Commadner. _Her and the Arl-Commander._

Oh Andraste.

Kallian sat down hard on the floor and stayed there for a bit.

One piece of parchment and the Arl-Commander's signature and seal, and she had all the rights and privileges of the nobility. She could sit in the Landsmeet, though as merely a Knight she couldn't vote. She could go armed anywhere in the country. The only people with the legal authority to try and convict her of a crime were her liege lord and the ruling monarch. In some instances, it was a capital offense, even treason, to attack to otherwise harm her. Her personal reputation and honor were now as sacred and inviolable as any Freeholder's- as any _human's_ \- and as an official representative of the arling, and through that Ferelden itself, an insult to her could be an insult to the Arl-Commander and the Crown, and vice versa. Insult to her people was an insult to her-

It started out as a breathless giggle, but soon Kallian was outright laughing, brightly, in something like relief. Let anyone try to touch an elf when she was around _now!_ The Arl-Commander had said he needed a household. Human commoners and Freeholders were protected under their lord's or employer's reputation. An estate of this size and dignity, which was going to hold court parties- you could employ a lot of people for that.

She got up from the floor, adjusted her armor, secured her sword across her back, and walked out the estate with the letter patent of accolade in hand and her head high. Let the city guard try to stop her. Let the other nobles take offense. She had Amaranthine's bear etched into the silverite plate across her chest and her linens and ties were warm wheat yellow and the leather sun-baked brown. She was wearing her lord's colors and was carrying a paper that made her legally as good as any of them, and _better_ than some of them.

The guards on the alienage got very set expressions as they had to let her pass through the gates with her sword, and Kallian had to resist stopping and shoving the letter in their faces. The Arl-Commander would take care of informing the rest of the country- the letter she had was for the alienage, and the alienage deserved to know first.

People she knew called hello when they saw her pass. Children who had been too young to remember when she left, or had been born since, stared at her with wide eyes, fascinated by the sight of an elven warrior dressed better than the city guard. The few adult faces that she didn't know- new spouses, from elsewhere- froze instinctively at the glimpse of two-handed sword and armor, then relaxed in confusion when they saw her ears.

It turned out to be laundry day- good. That meant that there were more people around than usual, even for what was usually a break day for elves in household service. Shianni was directing the procession of tubs set up around the vhenadahl to handle the neighborhood's collective washing, and her own father was seated up on the gathering platform, the Hahren holding court. She stopped at the edge of the square and held her free hand up to her mouth.

" _Surprise!"_ Kallian yelled across the space, and everyone descended, calling back greetings and questions for news as they dragged her up to the gathering platform to stand next to her father.

"Hey Dad," she said quietly as the neighborhood gathered, and Cyrion leveraged himself out of his chair to hug her.

"My little girl all in armor," he said. "I'll never tire of this."

"You were supposed to be back from Kirkwall _weeks_ ago!" Shianni yelled up at her from the tubs, where the launderers were quickly finishing up the tasks they'd been working on, in anticipation of a story.

"Yeah, yeah!" Kallian replied. "I got my own life, Shianni!"

"So tell us!" her cousin demanded, and others picked it up. Her father stepped back and held up his hand for quiet. Getting it, he gestured her towards the front of the platform.

"The Arl-Commander went to Kirkwall to find the daughter of Rendon How, and Andraste only knows why, he had me come along with the Wardens," Kallian said for the benefit of anyone who hadn't gotten the news, her voice carrying across the square. "And now I _finally_ understand the stories from the Blight. These people just turn up, and suddenly there's trouble! I'm pretty sure they just wandered around the country looking for darkspawn, and it rained chamberpots!"

There was a general chuckle at that. _'Raining chamberpots'_ was an old alienage saying- the shit in your life wasn't your fault, any more than noble estates illegally emptying chamberpots out the windows in the morning was, it just managed to hit you on the way down anyway. Thinking about the distinguished Grey Wardens suffering such an indignity was amusing.

"I got to fight demons," Kallian continued once everyone was listening again. "I got to fight a blood mage. And there was- now I know there's no point in asking you all not to laugh at me, but I'm doing it anyway- I met a guy."

Hooting laughter and mocking whistles greeted that, just as expected.

"This from the girl who swore for three hours straight that she wouldn't get married!"

"He's got this _voice!_ " she called back at whoever had made that comment. "And a sword as big as he is, and he could _definitely_ kill me! He's kicked my ass every time we've sparred! He's blighted _fast_ and strong and he spent six years in Kirkwall trying to lure the Magister he ran from out of Minrathous so he can rip his fucking hear out with his bare hands! And he could do it, too! The Magister's apprentice turned up while we were there, a blood mage, and he did it to her! The Arl-Commander and his man and I got captured by the slavers she brought and I tore through the shem filth the same way I did Vaughan Kendells, _and-_ "

Kallain flourished the parchment.

" _-the Arl-Commander knighted me for it!"_

Lots of excited shouting and congratulations later, someone had gotten a cheap bottle of wine her hand, and she and Shianni were sitting together at the base of the vheneadahl, under were they'd post the letter patent, sharing it. It was some pretty awful wine, but it tasted like home.

"So," Kallian said. "What are you doing these days? Job-wise?"

"Laundry," Shianni told her. "Dusting and sweeping. Dishes. I mucked stables for a week. The nobles are moving in or moving out for the winter, so there's lots of temp work if you're up for it. The shems have realized I talk, to temp work is all I've had for- a long time."

"Well," Kallian said, and handed her the wine bottle. "How would you feel about a job kicking rich drunk humans out the door?"

Her cousin smiled.

"Sounds great," she said. "But if this is another one of your _'move to Amaranthine'_ schemes, I'm still saying no. Even if it _is_ a tavern job-"

"No tavern," Kallian cut her off. "The Queen has ordered the Arl-Commander to attend spring court. He asked me to help him find a household staff from the alienage. He said that if I found someone good enough to be chamberlain, they could hire their picks for the staff."

Silence.

"It's at least a nine-month position, Shianni," she told her. "Five months until spring court opens on Wintersend, and then four for the season. The estate is a mess. Nobody's lived in it since Rendon Howe got grabby with other people's land. Whenever the Arl-Commander is forced to come, he and his Wardens just clean a couple rooms to sleep in, cook for themselves, and then leave. It needs to be even nicer than any of the other estates, to make up for what the shems will think about the Commander. And then it needs to stay that way. You already organize here. I bet you could do it."

Shianni just handed her the wine bottle back.

"I've got this picture in my head," Kallian pressed. "Since I started walking out to come down here. A whole legion of servants, in gold and white, all elves. Me, and the elves from Amaranthine's Guard, keeping an eye out, armored, armed. The Arl-Commander presiding. And all those blighted shem nobles trying not to piss themselves in their fancy outfits because we outnumber them, and if they're not polite to the staff or respectful to the guards or downright friendly to the Arl-Commander, he'll call them on it. And they'd know that we know that they've got not one sodding clue amongst themselves what decent behavior looks like. They're going to slip eventually, and it'll only be a matter of time. And then we'll all _be there_ to see it. Think you could make it happen?"

Her cousin stayed quiet a moment longer.

"I can damn well try," she finally said.


	3. Chapter 3

Zevran returned to Rialto with a dream of Theron quietly dying inside from his absence until there was nothing left of him still fresh in his mind. Dock beggars pressed for coin because everyone in Antiva knew Crow tattoos when they saw them, and he avoided their eyes.

He found one of the week-inns that let rooms without question. They were a favorite with conmen, smugglers, those on the search for more permanent accommodations, and the cheaper sort of Crows, like what he was pretending to be. Simple muscle, the sort of person who was trained in how to kill a mark in a crowd, because that was _easy_ and didn't need pesky things like actual intelligence or finesse.

The name he'd decided to assume for this trip was meant to sound more Rivaini than Antivan. He was dark enough for Rivaini heritage two or three generations back to not be out of the question for someone who didn't know his family history. The only constraint was that it had to be easy for him to remember, and react unconsciously to.

In the end, it had been too easy.

"Mahar Desoto," Zevran told the woman who owned the week-inn her chose. Desoto was Crow House based in Ayesleigh, on the other side of Antiva, and big enough that everyone in the House didn't know everyone else.

"Loshca Albanesu," the woman said in return, and gave him an obvious physical appraisal. Zevran tried to smile through it, but it left a sort of crawling feeling inside him that this sort of obvious desire never had before. He'd played this game when he'd last been in Antiva, killing Grandmaster Eoman Arainai and destroying his old House, but now there were words in his head and

 _Together we'll find out how he likes having a blood thrall for a lover._

He told himself he had to play to expectations and shifted his weight just enough to best show off his body. A particularly persistent rumor about the Crows held that they were, to a one, promiscuous and up for anything. In reality that was only a requirement for the Crows' courtesans- but, well, that was what he'd been trained in. Other rumor claimed that said courtesans were pure fiction and just fodder for bad romances; while the other popular school of thought held that they were skilled enough to kill someone simply by having sex with them. It was worth your life to experience, people said confidently in taverns across Antiva.

That sort of assassination was, of course, _physically_ impossible; but Zevran knew all too well that there were other kinds of death. Sex could be a very effective weapon in inflicting a lot of them.

Loshca clearly enjoyed the show, but didn't press any flirtation, which was a secret relief. She explained the inn rules on the way to show him his room. It was nothing he hadn't heard before- after one week the room price jumped fivefold, no whoring or other business out of the premises, and if someone was going to die take it out to the street or the rooftop. She didn't add that she paid protection to the Crows against theft. That was assumed, and anyway, _he_ was a Crow. He could be expected to know these things.

He locked the door once Loshca had gone back downstairs to watch the door, and unpacked. He only had a few of the clothes he'd taken to Kirkwall, the very simplest and plainest things that could have come from anywhere in Thedas. It wouldn't pay to stand out as a foreigner here, and things could have been awkward if he'd brought the rest, and someone had identified the cut and the style as Fereldan. The Crows didn't have business in Ferelden. The only person who'd ever considered hiring them had been Loghain- Ferelden just didn't have a _need_ for assassins. They preferred things all out in the open.

Three shirts, an extra pair of pants, all of his socks- he put them away in the short chest of drawers. They'd hold him until he could replenish his wardrobe with Antivan garments.

The notebook he'd been using to keep track of his expenses went on top of the chest. Zevran flipped it open and paused at the beginning, like he always did- he'd torn the first page of this journal out to write his farewell note to Theron, and he hadn't picked the ragged edge out of the spine yet. He wasn't certain he ever would.

He forced himself past the tiny detail and updated his expense record. The first entry at the top was the sum total of what the Wardens had had on them when he'd slipped away. He'd find some way to pay them back. His money noted, he quickly checked the back cover- he'd stitched Anora's list of Antivan candidates to the leather his first night aboard the ship to Rialto. It was still there, his reminder of why he'd come.

Well, that was a lie, but why dwell? He was in Antiva because he couldn't be fixed and Theron cared too much, which meant that Zevran couldn't do this to him. He couldn't stay and be the one thing Theron couldn't make better, the one person he couldn't help.

The Magister had done more than just steal his mind. She'd driven home the truth of the lie he'd been told so young- or he'd told himself- that he'd always believed it. He'd been a slave to the Crows, and even before that, he'd never been free. He hadn't been free since the moment his mother had fallen sick; or maybe even since the moment she'd been forced into the brothel to survive. He'd been telling himself his whole life that he'd made his own choices and always had, but they weren't choices if someone else had all the power. The blood magic had only proved this, written it into his soul with words he could never escape.

Zevran couldn't do anything about the blood magic, but Maker and Creators he _could_ do something about the Crows, and he had _truly chosen_ to do so. No one had forced him to come back here. This was maybe the first real choice he'd made in his whole life- it was perhaps a matter of semantics, but he didn't count anything after taking the contract on Theron and Alistair as a true choice. They were real ones, sure enough- choosing to live, to kill Taliesin, to stay with Theron, to fall so absolutely hopelessly and completely in love with him- they had happened, and it had been his own doing, without anyone forcing him. Those just didn't matter in the same way. He'd still been lying to himself then, and hadn't realized how precious a thing he'd managed to take for himself.

But the Crows- if enough of them died. If he _chose_ to be what they'd made him to be, if he turned cold-hearted ruthless assassin on his own terms. Then maybe he could gain at least as much control over himself as anyone else did.

The money he'd stolen was in the bottom of his sparse luggage, under two things he really shouldn't have brought with him, but had anyway.

The first was the silverite and Antivan leather armor Theron had commissioned for him. It was entirely too expensive for the role he was playing, and not at all good for acting as a Crow, but he hadn't been able to leave it behind like he had his Warden armor. This was a gift from someone special, and- the circumstance of it was important. Zevran had appointed himself Theron's bodyguard and spymaster once they'd gotten back from Orzammar and re-established themselves, half as a joke while also deadly serious about it. Theron was entirely too trusting for either of their well-being, and needed someone considerably more pragmatic and cynical about the human condition to watch out for him.

At the time, Theron had just smiled a little like he was humoring him, and Zevran had been sure that was the last they'd talk about it until some crisis inevitably came up.

But then a month and a half later he'd surprised Zevran with the armor, all laid out on their bed one evening after dinner. The silverite plates were delicately engraved on the edges with a complicated tangle of amaranth flowers and soaring owls. The leather was a warm golden brown and came with cream linen to go under it- Amaranthine colors- but the little embroidered details around the stitching and some of the edges were Dalish designs in the wine red and pink-purple of good Amaranthine dye. There was a sash to go with it, woven of both colors mixed together to create the richest and most luxurious shade of red-purple he'd ever seen. It had instantly become his new favorite color.

"It's low-key enough to be field armor," Theron had told him when he'd brought Zevran into their room to show off his present. "But when you wear it all together it's nice enough for dress armor, for when I have to hold court, or we're called to Denerim, and we need to be official about your positions."

"And you can show me off wearing your colors?" he'd asked slyly, and Theron had smiled a little. The way he wouldn't _quite_ meet Zevran's eyes was his obvious tell for when he was having possessive thoughts and trying not to enjoy them too much.

But Zevran was very much in favor of those possessive thoughts, and had made sure that Theron knew it.

He couldn't wear this armor in Antiva unless he dyed the leather and darkened the silverite, so it looked older and of lesser materials, but he couldn't do that. This armor was his place at the Keep, by Theron's side, protecting him, and- he wasn't there now and likely never would be again, but the memories of it were such precious things.

The majority of the armor went into the lowest drawer. The gloves and boots he kept out, because the silverite was sandwiched between the leather there, and even cheap Crows would have good equipment.

Wrapping the sash around his waist and making sure the subtly-embroidered owl in flight at the end of it was hanging down against his hip, the tight stitches in the same color as the sash itself noticeable only when he brushed his fingers against them, was pure sentiment. He wanted… _something,_ and this was the closest he'd get.

The second thing he shouldn't have brought was the gold-inlaid iron box. He didn't open it. The Wardens had been going to keep the red lyrium, but Zevran had thought that was a terrible decision for their health and slipped it into his bag when he'd run away. He'd meant to drop it over the side of the ship somewhere in the Amaranthine Ocean, and it worried him that he hadn't.

He'd find some way to get rid of it, he promised himself; and balled the bag up around the box and kicked both under his bed after he'd retrieved the money and hidden that, too. Then he went to the market, Alistair's coin purse tucked into his sash.

It was lunchtime and crowded. Zevran drifted around the stalls, contemplating the various clothes on sale and selecting items. He really needed a few things that were of slightly higher quality than were on display out here under the sun, but he could worry about that after he'd bought lunch, which he took on the fountain- a pocket of bread with lightly-fried fish and diced cucumbers in yoghurt sauce. Only in Antiva, and he savored the taste of it.

Once the market cleared up a bit, he ambled up one of the streets off the square and went into the first likely-looking clothes shop. Observation during lunch had shown him that red in all its varieties was the order of the season, and the selection here did not disappoint. There was true red and sangria and scarlet and jay and ruby and wine and brick, cherry and blood and mahogany and apple and berry and fire, even the rust brown of dried blood and the lightest of desert pinks. Embroidery was a common staple of Antivan fashion for all classes, and whoever had decided that black and white and yellow were the picks for the reds had had quite good taste. The effect was very striking, but Zevran almost forgot to notice once he realized what the embroideries _were._

Antivan fashion had long called for flowers, geometric patterns, and the usual mainstay of Andraste's sun-in-glory. But now-

Bulls and desert lions. Dragons and griffins. Snakes and scorpions. The elvhen-headed winged lions festooned with jewelry, the _dammashari_ , that you could still find carvings and statues of out in the desert. Many still guarded the ruins of temples and shrines to old Iashtivar Queen of the Heavens, their details worn almost away by the ravages of sand-laced wind and season rains and simple time, but their overall forms stayed strong.

This was the Antiva no one spoke of.

This was Antiva before the Imperium, when the oasis-dwellers who'd built the brick-and-stone cities the desert had long swallowed up or tumbled down, and spent the dry season on the coast or on the edges of the rainforest still spoke their own language; before it had been lost in the alphabet carved into the deep walls of the desert caves that no one could read any longer, with only the faint echoes of those old words in the purely local additions to the almost-Tevene of modern Antivan.

This was Antiva before the Chantry, after the Imperium had fallen and the those who remained gathered their communities together in communes in the floodplains and on the edges of the forests and in the hills and up against the sea, clinging to the forms of the old laws while they encoded what remained of their own heritage right alongside it; before the costal communes had become true cities through trade and remembered the Magisters' ruthlessness, plastering it over with Orlesian gilt to create something entirely new.

This was Antiva when it had truly been Rivain's sister-people, something like the Chasind and the Avvar of Ferelden, maybe even something like the Dalish.

Something had changed here, and he didn't know what, or how.

Zevran bought a dark red shirt with griffins and Iashtivar's _dammashari_ stitched large around the collar and cuffs in black and yellow, and left the shops behind.

* * *

He was on his way back to the inn when he passed a printer's stall closing up for the evening. Neither the senior apprentice running the stall or the last customer himself were anything out the ordinary, but a certain furtiveness and the way that they were trying a little _too_ much to seem perfectly normal made him pause in a shadow and watch.

The last customer bought an octavo book with no proper cover to show off its decorative stitch-binding. The apprentice slipped a pamphlet into the book behind the receipt in a deplorable example of slight-of-hand. Zevran followed the customer and brushed by him in the falling dark, fingering the receipt and the pamphlet out of the book.

He stopped the read the receipt by the light of a street lantern.

 _1 o. Exec. Romão Dommashari Aut. Rains 0.00.52 Garras. &Zu. sig. Ciri. Ola_

The pamphlet was made of thick, good paper, Zevran looked at it only long enough to note the block printed design across the top of it- a wide strip of black with Andraste's gold sun-in-glory shining over Iashtivar's bull-horn crescent moon the cream white of uninked paper, with two red _dammashari_ flanking the celestial symbols, facing each other and supporting the center with an upraised forepaw each.

Interesting. He'd read it when he was back in his room.

* * *

 _ **NO CROWS, NO KINGS, NO CLERICS!**_

 _ **It is known that:**_

 _ **1**_ _The House of Crows in Antiva controls every aspect of public life  
_ _ **2**_ _The descendants of our Honored Queen Asha Subira Badahur Campana care more for their infighting than the care of their birthright and have been shamelessly exploited by the Crows to further their own ends  
_ _ **3**_ _The structures of the Chantry have been co-opted to the agenda of the Crows so that the Chantry of Antiva is even more irredeemably corrupt than its sister-Chantries under both the White and Black Divines  
_ _ **4**_ _The merchant houses succeed only under the auspices of the Crows and this relationship to prevent any others from attaining wealth and status  
_ _ **5**_ _The people of Antiva suffer needlessly and egregiously under these four swords of oppression_

 _ **Thus we hold that:**_

 _ **6**_ _The Crows' greatest weapon is not their assassins but their intimate and collective knowledge of people and affairs both within and without Antiva  
_ _ **7**_ _The descendants of our Honored Queen Asha Subira Badahur Campana have forfeited their birthright and are not fit to rule  
_ _ **8**_ _The Chant of Light has been debased, defiled, and abused on the whims of the Chantry  
_ _ **9**_ _The merchant houses of Antiva impoverish the rest of the country in the name of profit and competition  
_ _ **10**_ _We the people of Antiva had the right and responsibility to revolution, rebellion, and reform_

 _ **And so we believe that:**_

 _ **11**_ _The Crows and the monarchy must be dispensed with through most any means necessary  
_ _ **12**_ _The governance of Antiva should be taken over by a Council of the Cities and Communes, as the city and commune councils draw from their own residents to declare matters of law and civic regulation  
_ _ **13**_ _The Chantry of Antiva must be dismissed and Antiva break with the Divine in Val Royeaux, and rather manage our own spiritual health according to the true and literal precepts given to us by Our Lady Andraste in Her most sacred and holy Chant of Light  
_ _ **14**_ _Money must not be a tool of oppression but rather a means of progression, and the merchant houses must therefore be humbled  
_ _ **15**_ _Knowledge is power, and information must therefore be free and easy to obtain  
_ _ **16**_ _Our time has come_

 _ **In the words of Our Lady Andraste, Prophet and Bride, to whom we commend ourselves, our honor and pride, and our beloved country of Antiva:**_

" _You who stand before the gates,  
You who have followed me into the heart of evil,  
The fear of death is in your eyes;  
Its hand is upon your throat.  
Raise your voice to the heavens!  
Remember:  
Not alone do we stand on the field of battle."_

 _So does_ _ **Rosso Noche**_ _stand with the strength of the Antivan people behind us and cry to the heavens:_

 _ **NO CROWS, NO KINGS, NO CLERICS!**_


	4. Chapter 4

No one cared what a prostitute thought, so Satheraan became Zevran before he was a year old.

Her job- Nehna had her pride and she held it fiercely with both hands because it was all she had. She saw others in the brothel lose theirs, and others she was pretty sure had never had any at all; but she used hers as her shield, her wall. The _shem'len_ never knew any better, and she could spin outrageous lies about the Dalish, tailored depending on what they wanted. She knew the truth. She knew better. She had her language and her history.

But her son spoke his first stumbling, halting words of El'vhen at age three, long after he'd mastered sentences in Antivan. He answered more readily to _'Zevran'_ than _'Satheraan'_ , and sometimes in the gray before dawn Nehna would lie in bed starting at the ceiling and wonder if he even understood that Satheraan was his name, and not just something she called him.

He knew Ghilan'nain's story because of her _vallas'lin_ ,and sometimes cried before bed because he was scared that Falon'din would mistake him for dead when he was just sleeping. But he didn't know who Elgar'nan's parents were, or why The People thanked Mythal for the world, or that Falon'din had a brother who would do anything for him, and he the same. She would tell him, and he wouldn't remember. But he could tell the simple version of Andraste's life that they lay sisters taught the poor for their spiritual benefit by heart in the disjointed, rambling way of small children; and said that the Tevenes were evil because they'd killed the Maker's Bride and not because Arlathan had fallen.

A few times- a very few times- she considered speaking to him only in El'vhen, so he'd learn it properly. But the one time she almost did the words knotted up in her throat because there were _shem'len_ around and they didn't deserve to have what should be her son's.

By the time he was four he knew _'mother'_ and the simple forms of _'I'm sorry'_ and _'hello'_ and _'goodbye'_ and _'please'_ and _'thank you'_ in El'vhen, and could count to seven and sometimes remembered how to say _'silver'_ and _'blue'_ and _'bird'_. But he couldn't form a sentence, and when she called him _'Satheraan'_ a few weeks before his fifth birthday, he was old enough to understand that she meant it as a name but pulled a face and told her that she didn't need to make his name sound Dalish, he liked Zevran.

Nehna cried into her pillows once she got off work that day. Her son heard her and climbed in with her, hugging her tight because he'd learned to be scared when women cried. Crying women meant that someone had hurt them and no one was going to do anything it, and the only thing he could do to make anyone feel better was offer hugs.

She held him close against her chest and sobbed out El'vhen apologies that he couldn't understand for everything he deserved, everything she'd hoped for him and meant to give him, that he'd never have because he was growing up in the filthy, _awful shem'len city._

The Crows collected on her debt straight from the brothel master. She knew it made the man nervous- Crows as clients were fine, but Crows getting involved in the business end of things was terrifying and could go bad quickly. He would have thrown her out, but she made good money for him; and if she was gone then _he'd_ have to explain to the Crows why they weren't going to be getting gold any longer.

The Crows didn't take everything now that she had a place in the brothel- just most of it. The other prostitutes could afford things like perfumes and nicer clothes and addictive habits and favorite foods, but between the Crows and caring for her son, the two of them mostly just managed to stay fed. Nehna had the protection of the brothel, but otherwise her circumstances were little better than the street whores that the others in the Summer Lily held themselves above, mostly because there were so very few people lower than any of them. Some of the others _treated_ her like a street whore- not slaps and kicks, because none of them could go around bruised; but they could steal from her or act condescending or call her names or a hundred other things.

It was really the older ones who did that- the ones her age and a bit over, who'd come to prostitution young or even grown up in the Summer Lily, and had lost so much of themselves because of the way they were treated. Nehna never wanted Satheraan- she would always call him that in her head, it was a precious thing, _'many pleasant dreams'_ and it was both all she had to give him and everything he deserved- to grow up like them, but she worried about how to make sure it didn't happen. There were three jobs for children who grew up in brothels- join a brothel themselves, join one of the Crow-overseen gangs that ran the neighborhoods, or join a crew and run off to sea.

Satheraan would break her heart if he ran off to sea, but it would be the best for him. He could live somewhere else, somewhere far away- Nevarra, maybe. It was far away from Antiva, and she'd heard that they were nicer to elves than Orlais.

There were other prostitutes in the brothel who were perfectly nice to her, of course; it was just that there were only two of them her age who were, and the rest of them were _children._

The youngest was fifteen, a human girl named Jacqina, who'd come to the Summer Lily because it was less humiliating working out of an establishment than having her own mother whore her out, and promising her to the local gang to do with as they wished. She'd been pregnant and miscarried a few days before arriving, and absolutely _adored_ Satheraan to a point that was almost sisterly. Nehna would bring him to her rooms and Jacqina would play with him while Nehna cooked for all of them, and then after dinner she'd sit on the floor behind the girl while Satheraan dozed, and braid her long black hair.

"Who was his father?" Jacqina eventually asked, one day.

' _A woodcutter'_ was the answer she'd always given, the little joke he'd told her when they met, but this time it died on her lips. Her hands still in Jacqina's hair.

"A Crow," Nehna told her. "He married me without permission."

Jacqina reached up and took her hands out of her hair, holding them. The whole brothel knew that most of Nehna's pay went to the Crows, but no one had ever known why.

"I'm so sorry," Jacqina said. "Was it quick?"

" _No,"_ Nehna whispered, and started crying. She'd never cried for Adan before, not in company. Jacqina leaned back into her and sang quiet songs until she'd finished.

"That wasn't Antivan."

Jacqina turned around to look at her.

"Jacqina isn't my name," she said, back straight and defensive and oh, did Nehna know this, this was _pride._ "My mother married a desert-man and ran away with me when I was ten. She said that she couldn't stand the way that they still worship in Iashtivar's shrines don't even pray to the Maker, only Andraste. She said that it was _living in sin-_ "

Her voice broke instead of turning into bitter laughter, which was probably what she would have preferred to happen.

"No one could pronounce my real name," Nehna offered in return. "Only my husband ever tried. I am Nehna Sora Revasina of the Dalish."

The woman who was not Jacqina smiled tremulously at her.

"Tanis nin Zagin-miri," she said. "Of the Khagti."

"And my son," Nehna said, suddenly feeling that this was urgent, important information; and that if she didn't say it now the knowledge would just be lost, buried forever under Antiva and uncaring cruelty. "My son is Satheraan Adan Revasina."

"Satheraan," Tanis repeated, with a soft smile for Nehna's son, where was sleeping on top of her covers, and Nehna began to cry again. _Creators,_ the El'vhen sat _right_ in Tanis's mouth, she'd never thought anyone here would even _try,_ much less say it properly the first time-

"Nehna?" she asked in concern, and the vowels slid low and open off her tongue the way they never did in Antiva.

"Please," she begged. "Please, say it again."

"Satheraan. Nehna. Nehna Sora Revasina."

There was just _something_ about it, the little way that it was her clan's name properly, _'Revas-ina'_ and not _'Reva-sina'_ the way that the _shem'len_ and the city elves had always butchered it even though it was such a _simple_ thing, and she just couldn't bear it.

"Tanis," Nehna said, fumbling for her friend's hands, doing her best to return the favor of proper words; and must have gotten it right because Tanis smiled brilliantly at her and gripped back tightly, hanging onto this newfound thing they had between them. "Tanis nin Zagin-miri."

Satheraan turned six and Tanis sang him bright whirling desert songs in Khagti because she was always in their place or they in hers, now. Nehna cooked the strips of beef Tanis had brought the appropriate Aliashtivar celebration of life, and a shelf by the window had wood carvings Nehna had made of the Creators and Andraste and Iashtivar with her _dammashari_ all mixed together. A metal plate Tanis had scavenged from somewhere lay in front, dusty with the remains of burned incense.

Three months later Tanis quietly told Nehna, in the dead of morning when the brothel was closed and the rest of the house was sleep, that she'd loved to be able to move in with them. They both knew it would never happen, because it would mean the brothel master knew for certain that they considered themselves family, and _'love between whores'_ was an old selling-point in this business. He'd advertise them together, and it would do nothing but destroy them.

Tanis knew that well, and never brought it up again; but Nehna held the knowledge that she wanted to close in her heart, right next to Adan choosing to marry her and Satheraan's entire existence.

Still, people knew. Nehna never called Tanis _'lethal'an'_ where anyone but the three of them could hear, but there were more ways than words to show you cared for someone, and it turned into another thing for the older prostitutes to use against her, more fodder for nasty and cutting comments or looks. But the younger ones were protective of Tanis as _the_ youngest, still; and many of them liked Nehna and were charmed and comforted by Satheraan's presence. The brothel master was forced to come down on the older ones instead, to keep peace in the Summer Lily.

Except that he watched them, now, and six months later Nehna took a careful look back over her record of pay and realized that the reason that their food didn't seem to be lasting so long was because he'd started holding more of her money back for the Crows. Often, now, their meals were more leftovers from what the Summer Lily made for their clients than anything she'd bought and prepared herself.

Tanis would have helped out, but they realized that she was getting paid less, too. The prices reported to the clients and what she'd been told she was worth were quite different amounts. They were being punished for making the brothel master's life difficult, and Nehna started guarding Satheraan closely. None of the others were allowed children- they'd been forced to leave the ones they already had behind with friends or family, lose any they became pregnant with, or give the babies up to the Chantry orphanage when they were born- and it would be so, so easy for the brothel master to arrange for her son to just disappear one day, and claim he'd run off because he was a stupid little knife-ear brat who'd probably deserved whatever he'd gotten.

Satheraan never disappeared, not even at the most dangerous part of the day when he went to the local Chantry to learn the basics of his letters along with all of the other children in the area, legitimate or bastards or human or elf or street trash or the next best thing. Nehna would stay up long enough to escort him there and back, or Tanis would, or one of the other younger prostitutes. Nehna almost preferred letting Tanis or one of the others do it, both for their sakes and Satheraan's- when she came around to the Chantry, her son had to listen to the not-at-all whispers about the Dalish; but when one of the others went, the sixteen-seventeen-eighteen-year-old _children_ , they got a little extra care from the faithful and a reminder that they world wasn't limited to other prostitutes, thugs, and clients.

She could live without that reminder. Her life had been happy until Master Escipo, and she had her son and Tanis and her gods and her memories of love in the clan and with Adan. Most of the others had never even had a fraction of that.

When her son turned seven, she fell sick.

The work rules at the Summer Lily were as simple as they were cruel. The client gets what they want. Always do what the brothel master says. If you don't work for a week, you get thrown out. If someone covers for you after that week, it's accepted, but they have to make enough to cover _both_ jobs as though nothing was amiss.

On the fifth day of Nehna being too sick to work, wracked with sweats and diffuse pain and no appetite to speak of, Tanis got up from the chair she'd been sitting in to nurse her and said she was going to go talk to the others about covering for her, just in case.

On the sixth day, they did the accounting together- the younger ones who they were friends with could cover her for five more days, until they all ran out of money for food or the addictions that kept them functional. This was the hazard of Nehna being the highest-priced prostitute in the house, and the Crows' every-ten-days collection.

On the eleventh day, Nehna was no better, and had barely gotten out of bed in a week and a half. She kept seeing Satheraan trying to hide outside the doorway, watching her anxiously. Tanis was looking worn down and strained and already halfway to accepting that Nehna and Satheraan were going to be thrown out into the streets, and she would be alone.

It was enough for Nehna to force herself to get up and work that night, to reset the week-count. She paid for it for the next three days, when she was barely lucid and felt like her body was tearing itself apart.

On the sixteenth day of being sick, she woke up to find that Tanis had begged the other prostitutes, the Sisters at the local Chantry who taught the children's lessons, the other children's parents, and random passers-by on the street for coin enough to get her an apothecary and some medicine. The apothecary had been very confused about _why_ she was sick in the first place, but had been able, at least, to prescribe some painkilling herbs and suggest a chance in diet. They couldn't afford the diet but the herbs were cheap enough and helped some. It wasn't enough to make her functional for work, and the herbs made her sleep so much, but when she was awake she was _awake,_ and in little enough pain that she could walk around for a few minutes with assistance from Tanis.

Day twenty marked one day below three weeks of not earning any real pay, and the brothel master came around to her rooms to yell about Crows and gold and how _someone_ had to start paying before the Crows decided to take it out of _him._ Tanis tried to volunteer her own pay, but Nehna stopped her. It wasn't nearly enough to cover what the Crows usually got, and Tanis's money was the only thing keeping the three of them in food.

Nehna slept through most of day twenty-one, absolutely exhausted by the yelling the day before. Tanis shook her awake at the Chantry bells sounding an hour after nightfall.

"I'm so sorry," she said, tears streaming down her face. She'd have to fix her makeup and hair before showing herself off for the clients on the ground floor again. "Nehna, Nehna, I'm so sorry I swear I didn't know _no one knew_ we would have stopped him I don't even know where he got the idea-"

"What?" Nehna asked, roused fully awake by the _'he'_. " _What,_ Tanis? What did that lout of a _shem_ who runs this place-"

"It's not _him,_ Nehna," Tanis cut her off, despair heavy in her voice. "It's _Satheraan._ "


	5. Chapter 5

The rain was pitter-pattering against the leaves of the willow tree around them and the surface of the stream that flowed through the low hills around Vigil's Keep. The air was spring-cool and the view of midlands Amaranthine was being slowly obscured by sunset-lit mist. Theron's head was in his lap, eyes closed in quiet, comfortable contentment as Zevran stroked his fingers through his hair. They'd been going to go back to the Vigil before the rain had started, but this was a convenient excuse to stay outside for just a little longer, in this private stillness, and it took Zevran too long to notice that the grass was wrong.

His dreams always had a problem with grass. It was a lot of detail for the Fade, and hadn't grown up with it. The first time he'd seen a full ground cover of green had been in Ferelden, outside of Denerim.

 _Please don't be a demon, please don't be a demon,_ Zevran thought, and it was that much more than the stutter of his fingers in dream-Theron's hair that gave his newfound awareness away. Thoughts could be louder than words here.

A desire demon's eyes glittered out of Theron's face, and Zevran shoved it away as the horns started to grow. It got halfway to its true form before settling on a different face from his memory, and the draping, swaying willow branches behind Theron became the walls of a familiar room in Antiva City behind Rinna; and awareness slipped away again.

"Zevran," she said urgently, grabbing his hands. "Zevran, please just _listen_ to me. I did it. I found a way to get out. There are these people, they want to make me the next Queen, and that wouldn't get me away from the Crows but if I _pretend-_ they said that they have a safe place the Crows can't track them to, I could escape from there and no one would ever find me- _come with me,_ Zevran."

His heart was in his throat because they were in Antiva City, just come from the House of Crows, and anyone could have followed them.

"That is entirely too god to be true," he told Rinna. "They will kill you for trying to run away."

"No they won't," she said. "You and me and Taliesin- we're the best and they _know_ it. You ran away to the Dalish and they barely punished you when you came back, you could take contracts again after two weeks and they didn't do any permanent damage! Even if they catch me, I'll be fine."

"And Taliesin?" Zevran asked, because Taliesin was his oldest friend, and he didn't want to leave him to the Crows.

"They'll take him too, Zev, promise. Rosso Noche-"

And then the illusion fell apart again, because the desire demon had just pulled surface connections when the much better fabrication of Amaranthine had started to fall apart, and Zevran was _never_ going to mistake _this._

He pushed the desire demon away again, and woke himself up. He was getting better at it, but he still wasn't good enough.

There was no real need for candles at night this far into Rialto. Light from the street lamps got everywhere, and he used it to write down his dreams in the journal, the way Anders had told him to. The grass discrepancy was noted, as well as the way that the demon had tried to switch the story, and the face that Rinna and Rosso Noche was something that could snap him into lucid dreaming.

Under the description of the dream, he noted _'desire'_ ; and then proceeded to ignore the rest of Anders's advice and refused to go back to sleep.

Maker and Creators, how he _hated_ desire demons.

Demons had never been something he'd hated, before this. They were alternately a nuisance and a challenge, but he'd never held any particular ill will against him. They were like highwaymen, or mercenaries. He'd been attacked by many over the years. They were just something that happened, and you lived with it.

He could live with the fear demons, the terror demons, the despair demons. They came so often in his dreams that he hoped, maybe, that he could become used to seeing Theron dead, Theron enslaved, Theron broken, Theron alone on his Calling; the Vigil destroyed, Ferelden turning on the Gray Wardens once more, treacherous Amaranthine banns getting a coup attempt _right_ for once; himself with blood on his hands he didn't want to think about, himself with a letter in his hands that he couldn't bear to read but did anyway as it tore his soul apart, himself with words words _words in his_ _ **head**_ he couldn't fight.

Zevran was sure that he wouldn't, but all of that was better than desire demons.

If only they tried to trap him with seduction, but most demons knew better. They knew that all he _really_ wanted was to have things back the way they'd been before Kirkwall. They would keep stealing his memories and corrupting the one simple pleasure of _pretending_ that he had left until one night he just gave into it, to avoid having to wake up and face it again the next time he fell asleep.

Zevran _hated_ desire demons. He'd been good at not wanting things, once.

And that thought brought a whole new round of revulsion about Crows and slavery and no choices that drove him into getting dressed and blast, he'd forgotten to get fitting armor yesterday at the market!

He couldn't wear anything too brightly colored, not for a gray morning roof run, but some of the reds he'd found yesterday were dark enough. Boots, gloves, the Amaranthine sash firmly secured, money pouch and the receipt and the Rosso Noche pamphlet from yesterday tucked safely away, sword and off-hand knife sheathed were they wouldn't get in the way, and out the window and _off._

Roof-running was an essential Crow skill, and Zevran leapt and rolled and crept and clambered and balanced his way through it, faster and faster, choosing roofs with more obstacles and walls with the narrowest under-window ledges and road crossings that got wider and wider until it was past dawn enough that the city was awake and he was crouched out of sight near the edge of a roof, overlooking the Queen's Highway market from the day before and catching his breath. He was keyed up, adrenaline replacing sleep, and every trained instinct was screaming at him to _finish the job find your mark!_ because the sun was up and this was Antiva and no one was dead.

Zevran placed his palms flat on the roof and leaned into them, bending over until his forehead was almost to the baked adobe. The risen sun warmed his hair and it occurred to him, that if he extended his arms and his hands palms up, he'd be in the proper Dalish obeisance to a Creator.

Theron had done this once on the road during the Blight. He'd done it since then, as well, but the first time was the one Zevran remembered the best.

No one had been expecting it. It had been the first day of summer, and they'd been on the road somewhere in central Ferelden. The night before Leliana had held an All Soul's Day service- thought it had really been the day before the holiday proper- as best as could be done while still being in camp. Alistair had helped her build the fire up while the rest of the camp watched.

Morrigan had held to her own, separate fire, huffing about fools' comforts and the stupidity of celebrating one woman's death almost a thousand years ago, until Theron asked her to hunt with him for dinner, and they'd disappeared. Zevran had dithered silently over whether he wanted to be included or not, and finally compromised by sitting and petting Fen'harel while he listened to Leliana, joining in on the congregation parts so quietly that even _he_ wasn't sure if he'd said anything out loud.

Theron and Morrigan had come back with dinner, and Theron had volunteered to take the morning watch, and Zevran had woken to the smell of Antivan incense. He'd been so startled and disoriented that he'd burst out of his tent with sword and knife out, ready to kill whoever had tracked him down.

But it had just been Theron, with a little fire lit on top of a large flat rock he must have pulled up from the small river that ran by their campsite. Resin crystals were scattered around the edges of the flames, not close enough to burn, but close enough to melt slowly and release scent. Theron had been bowing to it, and the rising sun behind it, knees and forehead and arms to the ground, palms up. The first thought that Zevran had been able to come up with was that it was possibly the best position to find someone in, if your goal was to slit their wrists open without them being able to easily fight back.

And then he'd heard the El'vhen, and couldn't resist. He could pick out only a few words he recognized- Sylaise, _'glory'_ , _'gold'_ , _'song'_ \- but it was enough to keep him transfixed, blades sheathed and sitting silently off to the side to watch.

Theron had finished his singing prayer and sat up, carefully removing the resin crystals from the stone before dousing the fire with their water bucket.

When he'd moved to clean up, he'd noticed Zevran where he sat, and given him a smile.

"Today is Sylaise's holy day," he explained as he wrapped the incense crystals back up in their cloth scrap so they could be replaced in their pouch. It was a Dalish pouch, the leather almost entirely hidden by colorful embroidery. "We thank her for her gifts of the arts- our song, our language, and our magic- and our families and children."

That was a subject he'd known not to linger on. Zevran had gotten up to help him move away the remains of the fire and the river stone.

"I did not know the Dalish bowed," he'd remarked, and Theron had picked up on the unasked question because he was terrifying like that, able to tell _exactly_ when he wanted more information about his mother's people but couldn't make himself ask. "It seems rather against the spirit of bitter independence."

"We have many bows," Theron had said, and stood before him so he could see. "For greeting a friend, equal, or superior-"

It was more of an extended nod than anything, though he did angle his shoulders forward.

"-to a particularly respected Keeper or Hahren-"

Zevran had been surprised to find that it was an _Antivan_ bow, a bit out of fashion in favor of the court manners of Orlais, but popular enough in most of Antivan money and society. He'd had to learn it in the Crows- you bowed from the waist, but not the whole way down, with your arms swept out to the sides and a little bit of bend in the legs.

"-to the remembered and honored dead-"

Theron had gone on his knees then, and it had been another surprise because it looked almost like the Chantry prayer position. His arms were bent up and his head down, the insides of his wrists bared again.

"-to beg forgiveness, or to begin the most personal or sacred conversations-"

He'd leaned forward so he was bent perpendicular to the ground. The backs of his fingers just touched the dirt and if he kept baring his wrists like that Zevran was going to _scream_ and make him put his gauntlets on.

"-and to the Creators."

Theron had repeated the bow to the sun and fire he'd been doing earlier, and when Zevran had helped him up he didn't let go once he was standing. It had felt silly and hadn't made any sense to him at all at the time, because they hadn't been in danger, but he'd felt distinctly, intensely better with the pulse of Theron's wrists strong and protected beneath his fingers.

"Those are not defensible positions," Zevran had informed him. "You are simply _asking_ for someone to take a knife to you. You cannot get to your feet easily from such a kneel, and you are too well braced against the ground to fall properly and roll out of the way of an attack."

Theron had smiled at him and said that that was the point. You were always vulnerable to the people you loved, and the people who protected you.

Five years later on the rooftop in Rialto, Zevran looked at the insides of his own wrists, properly protected within his discreetly-armored, elbow-length leather gloves. He thought that that truth was still as terrifying to him now, after he'd accepted that trust and love into his life, as it had been then, when he'd still been too scared and confused and blind to his own emotions to try.

* * *

He bought breakfast in the market and went around to an armorer's. The owner of the establishment he finally chose looked deeply shocked to see him. Zevran made an emergency memory check and came up with nothing. He was almost certain he'd never seen this woman before.

"And you would be Mistress di Treviso?" he asked. That was the name on the sign out front, and she nodded jerkily before recovering her composure.

"And what can I do for you, Master Crow?"

Ah, well, he wasn't officially a Master, but he wouldn't say anything. All Mistress di Treviso knew was that a Crow in no armor but gloves and boots, not even _hidden_ armor, had come into her shop. Only Crows who were very, very secure in their positions could afford to do that- someone like the Masters of the Talon Houses, or the Grandmaster.

He smiled, trying to disarm her with charm, and told her what he wanted. She produced a set of leather armor with a minimum of panic, pulling on different parts of different standard sets to get him what he wanted. There could have been an awful mis-match of pieces, except for the fact that everything was dyed either black or a middling-dark grey. Crows bought the majority of good leather armor in Antiva, after all, and there was an _aesthetic_ to satisfy.

Zevran changed into the armor on her roof, pleased with the way that it allowed so many places for hidden surprises, and so much movements. He missed his silverite, but there were veridium plates hidden inside this leather, and that would serve well enough. He made sure his sash was visible before trotting along the rooftops in search of the _'Garras. &Zu.' _from the receipt he'd stolen the night before.

He found it eventually, after some pleasantly-directionless wandering. ' _Garrastazu and Zuñiga, Printers'_ was the sign above the door, and Zevran hopped back to street level in an alley and went in the front door.

The apprentices working _this_ shop were even more surprised to see him than the armorer had been. There were three of them- the human senior apprentice from the stall the night before, a dark girl with her hair cut short, and a blond elf-blooded boy who was semi-successfully keeping his long hair back in a braid. Of the three, he seemed the calmest. The senior apprentice looked like he might faint, and Zevran pretended to be distracted by one of the shelves nearest to the door to give him a chance to flee in the back room.

When he looked again at the counter, the girl had positioned herself firmly behind it, watching him. Her hands were shaking just a bit, and the way her fingers twitched- it wasn't a familiarity of knives, but he knew it anyway. Ah well, he'd remember eventually; and if she tried to attack him, he'd find out.

The elf-blooded boy had actually come out from behind the safety of the long, broad counter and was standing at his elbow.

"Can I help you, Master Crow?" he asked.

He didn't speak Antivan like a native, which explained quite a bit. He hadn't learned yet to properly fear the Cows. Zevran debated with himself for a moment, and then decided that he wasn't going to be the one to give him that lesson.

"And you are?"

"Fainire Vincenti," the boy answered. "You?"

Oh, that was _entirely_ too direct, and Zevran was tempted to decide otherwise about that lesson simply by virtue of this sheer _cockiness._ Someday soon he was going to encounter a real Crow, and he might not walk away from it.

"Mahar Desoto," he said, and made a sharp, dismissive gesture so the girl behind the counter would simply be relieved that the Crow had decided not to take offense, rather than confused about his lack of reaction. Confusion made people remember you, and wonder. "If I require help, Vincenti, I shall inform you."

Zevran wandered off into the books, browsing, and eventually one of the master printers turned up in the front to track his progress. The senior apprentice must have summoned him.

In the back corner, he found what he was looking for- a bound version of the octavo he'd seen bought the night before, with a cover of red leather. Stamped onto the spine in thin, darkened letters was _Ezecil Romão,_ and the printing on the first page proclaimed it to be _Dammashari of the Autumn Rains: Reclaiming Antiva's Ancient History._

As a point of interest, Zevran noted that _all_ of the books on this shelf were bound in red leather, or wrapped in red-dyed canvas, or had their red decorative binding stitches bared. Almost all of the titles were on old Antivan history, or Queen Asha Campana, or modern accounts of the cities. Only a few seemed to be fiction. Down near the floor, he found a surprisingly-thin copy of the Chant of Light that turned out, on further inspection, to contain only the Canticle of Transfigurations for some reason.

He took Romão's book with him to the counter.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" the master printer asked. He was much better at hiding his nervousness than his apprentices, but not good enough.

"Without any trouble," Zevran assured him. "Messere Garrastazu, or Messere Zuñiga?"

"Zuñiga," the printer said. He'd stared too long at the title of the book while he'd been writing down the information for the receipts- one to stay with the shop and one for Zevran.

He handed one over and Zevran signed _'Mahar Desoto'_ at the bottom. Zuñiga tried to exchange it for the other, and Zevran left him holding it three beats to long before taking it.

"Vincenti," the told the man. "Is going to get himself killed one of these days. Soon. Foreign ignorance is no excuse to the Crows."

Zevran picked up his book and exited the shop before any of them could notice that he'd snuck the receipt from the night before and the Rosso Noche pamphlet under the book, and left them behind on the counter.

He'd written _'be more careful'_ on the back of the receipt. Hopefully, they'd listen to him. It would be a shame to lose anyone who wanted the Crows gone enough to commit the words to print. That took a certain, rare courage.

* * *

He holed up in a residential fountain courtyard on the inside of an apartment building, hiding in the tree branches to look through the book he'd bought. He had expected it to be a very scholarly sort of book, and was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be nothing of the sort. It was easy to follow, and read almost more like a travelogue or a novel than a work of history. There was lots of lavish prose about the desert ruins and the imagined emotional state of Antivans at important points down through their history. It was _fun,_ and oddly moving. He got halfway through it before it was almost too late to go buy some dinner, and felt strangely invested in Antiva as a nation of independent, enterprising spirit, complemented by a deep appreciation of beauty and pleasure, back up by excellent administrative skills.

Zevran went to bed that night because demons would be a faster, cleaner death than running into Crows while sleep-deprived. His last stray thought before sleep took him was about how strange it was that he hadn't seen _any_ other Crows in two days of frequenting Rialto's public spaces.

He dreamed of _dammashari_ in the desert, surrounded by the quick-blooming summer flowers, and couldn't tell where the trick was. He was distantly pleased that he was lucid dreaming from the beginning of the night this time around, but the more important things were _'where was the demon?'_ and _'why would one think this would trick me?'_ This was just what he'd been reading before bed, not anything personal to him.

Zevran wandered around the _dammashari_ , checking the flowers every so often to make sure that he still knew they weren't supposed to be vague like that around the edges. It was night here, and too bright under the full moons. The stars stood out intensely against the pure dark of the sky, and if he _really_ concentrated, he was pretty sure that he could find the outline of the Black City against it.

Eventually, a statue of Iashtivar turned up, a woman wearing a crown of diamond stars with a long-bladed spear in one hand and the other open, palm up and fingers tipped down. The stone was gilded with gold and silver and inlaid with gems, dressed in real cloth, and looked much newer than the _dammashari_ flanking her. The pedestal of her statue was covered in bouquets of desert flowers and copper and bronze bowls of water, all placed atop the dusty tan of desert lion skins or the obsidian black of jungle panther.

An owl flapped up to land on the goddess's wrist. It hooted at him. Zevran eyed it suspiciously. They stared at each other for a long time before Zevran imagined the weight of a throwing knife in his hand and flung it at the out-of-place bird.

The owl resettled onto the other stone wrist and hooted at him again. This time it sounded reproving.

"I have known demons to _possess_ animals," Zevran told the animal. "But pretending to _be_ one is a new trick."

"You know so much about demons?"

Zevran turned towards the voice and became even more confused and vaguely annoyed, because instead of anyone he actually _knew,_ it was the elf-blooded printers' apprentice, dressed like a Dalish.

"This is extremely sub-par work," Zevran said loudly to the surrounding desert. "Are you even _trying?_ "

He could use a night off, but this was just insulting. How was he supposed to sleep properly if he was always going to be _bothered_ by the way the dream made no sense? Changing the surroundings to fit some kind of narrative sounded like work as well. How were mages _ever_ rested? Did their magic make up for it somehow?

"Do you usually insult demons?" the apprentice asked. He sounded honestly interested.

"I do if they are sufficiently inept," Zevran retorted. "Leave."

The apprentice smiled at him.

"No."

Fine then. If there was going to be a test of wills, a _child_ was not going to beat a fully-trained adult Crow.

Zevran willed him gone very hard, but the apprentice's image didn't even flicker. He just smiled wider, looking amused and much too pleased with himself.

"It won't work, Crow," he said. " _I'm_ the one in control here. You wear Rosso Noche colors, you come into a Rosso Noche printers', you buy a Rosso Noche book and leave a stolen Rosso Noche pamphlet behind, and you think that we would just _ignore_ you? There are no more of your kind in Rialto for a reason. Whatever your Masters wanted from this little trip of yours, they're not getting it. You're not waking up until _I_ let you."

Zevran had him on his back in the hard-packed desert dust with a knife drawing shallow blood against his throat before he could take another breath.

"There are two ways here, you see?" he said conversationally. "One is that you are lying because you are a demon, and a very poor one at that, in which case I kill you and you are dead and I get to wake up. The other is that you are telling the truth, in which case I kill you and you wake up Tranquil and I get to wake up just as whole and healthy as when I fell asleep. _Or-_ "

He dug the knife in a little further.

"You leave on your own, and I get to wake up, and _you_ get to wake up or go off to exercise your demonic whiles elsewhere, and everyone leaves happy. What option do you like better?"

The boy's eyes were very wide as he disappeared out from under him, leaving behind the tiniest change in the desert air. Zevran woke himself up.

"-eatened to make me _Tranquil!_ "

And was promptly knocked back into unconsciousness.

At least he didn't dream, this time.


	6. Chapter 6

Nehna had been able to hold onto the throwing knives that Adan had given her through these seven years. She couldn't really wear them anymore, but they were tucked up safely in the bottom of her clothes trunk, wrapped in her old leather jacket.

If she had been any more mobile, any less sick, she would have gotten up and unwrapped them and put one right through the brothel master's _head_ before grabbing Satheraan and Tanis and running for the docks, Dread Wolf take the Crows!

Her _son,_ her son her _child_ had gone to the brothel master and-

"I don't want to know," Nehna told Tanis. "I don't want to hear about it, I don't-"

Tanis left her alone, to go back to work so they could eat, and Nehna tried not to think about it but she was alone in the room and it was the dark of the night and _Satheraan-_

He came back to the rooms once the Summer Lily had closed for the morning, with a double handful of silver. He put it down on the bedside table- twelve or fifteen pieces. Before the brothel master had started targeting her and Tanis, that had been what Nehna had gotten in two weeks, once the price for the Crows was taken out.

Satheraan climbed into bed with her.

"Some people like children," he said, like that was supposed to make things _better._ "And everyone says that elves are pretty, and that's why we have clients, because they want something easy and pretty."

"This is _wrong._ "

"You need money for the herbs and so we can stay here. And the master agreed."

It took her one shocked, horrible second to realize that he really _didn't_ see what the problem was- this was just what the people he knew _did_ and he'd never lived anywhere else to know that _'right'_ wasn't the same thing as _'allowed'_ and oh Creators what had she _done_ to him. He'd fallen asleep atop her while she thought and Nehna had lived seven years as a prostitute and a full decade away from Revasina among the _shem'len_ but this, listening to Satheraan's quiet, even breathing, this was the first time that she had honestly felt _worthless._

They didn't talk about it once they'd both woken up again, that afternoon. Nehna didn't want to think about it.

But then the city bells tolled evening and her son slipped off the bed and darted out of her grasp when she tried to grab him, pull him back-

" _Don't,_ Satheraan-"

"You need the money," he said, and that didn't _matter_ he was far too young and her _son_ and- "And If I do it enough I'll get used to it. That's what they tell all the new prostitutes, but I know it already."

"No, _da'len-_ "

"I'll be back in the morning, _M_ _amae_."

" _ **Satheraan!"**_

But he was out the door, headed for the stairs to the ground floor and the clients, and she was too _weak_ to get up, to stop him, to protect him.

* * *

The days began to pass in an indistinct haze, helped along by Antivan brandy, broken only by the sound and scent of Tanis cooking food or the way that Satheraan clung to her tighter and tighter in his sleep and smiled unconvincingly when he was awake. The pain was too much, and knowing what her son was doing was too much, and the silver that was accumulating in the wood box in the kitchen was _far_ too much. Brandy took care of all three of those problems.

At some point, Tanis brought the apothecary back. The only thing Nehna remembered of that visit was the apothecary saying something about the fact that steeping the painkilling herbs in the brandy would actually make them more potent. This was great news, but also meant that she got less of the brandy overall, since there were specific ratios of alcohol to herbs.

Tanis might have paid the apothecary to say that, actually. She was always worried about them these days, and Nehna's one comfort was that Tanis watched Satheraan through the nights, and had enlisted others to do so as well. They knew better than to try to tell _her_ about it, but if Satheraan ever needed someone to defend him, or be there for him after something happened, someone would.

Months passed slow and fast all at once- days of being confined to bed made the hours drag, but it was always a surprise to be told how _many_ had gone by without her really noticing.

A few weeks before Satheraan turned eight- Mythal, _eight,_ she'd been sick over half a year- Tanis bought only enough brandy to steep the herbs in and refused to get any more.

"You haven't seen what it's doing to him," Tanis told her. "Or you have and you've ignored it, in which case don't tell me, because I thought better of you. Satheraan's so _happy_ when he's awake and you're awake. You sleep so much, and then when you're awake you're drunk, but the few times he's caught you sober- Nehna, it would break your heart to see the difference. It's been breaking mine. Please. Stop for him, and me. We both want you back."

Nehna reached for her hand and said she was sorry. Still, the only thing that kept her sober was that it hurt so much to get up and move, and Tanis had put the brandy up high enough that she had to drag a chair over to reach it. By the time Nehna would have been able to get the chair arranged, she knew, she'd be too weak to do anything but collapse into it. That would be humiliating, so she never tried.

She watched Satheraan carefully, when she could, through re-adjusting to life without so much of the brandy, and saw after a few days that Tanis had been telling the truth. He lit up from the inside out whenever he saw her awake, and his smile was a true, happy thing, never forced. He'd clamber into bed with her and listen raptly to the Dalish stories she told, fighting to stay awake for _'one more, please'_.

And she learned that he'd stopped going to the Chantry Sisters' lessons. Nehna asked Tanis to bring back some of the public broadsheets from the market, sailors' and city news, and pulled herself to the kitchen table to assess how well Satheraan remembered. His grasp of written Trade and Common Antivan was shakier than her own imperfect ability with either, but she wasn't going to worry about it. He had years yet, and even in literacy-happy Antiva, there were people older than him who were worse.

Nehna couldn't do much with him for the common script besides make him practice, the same way Adan and her old neighbors had had her practice with the free broadsheets, but she could help with an area the Chantry Sisters would never cover, not for the poor.

"You should learn the Justinian script," she told her son.

Satheraan's face scrunched up.

"But that's for the Chantry."

"And official documents, and scholarship, and literature," Nehna said. "They made common script out of dwarf signs because so many people could recognize a few already, but it also means that they can keep their secrets. Knowledge is power, Satheraan, and if you don't know Justinian they can keep it from you. What few books we have from the Dales are written in Justinian, applied to El'vhen the same way it's applied to other languages. We had our own alphabet, once, but it's yet another thing we've lost. A few times, our clan found _shem'len_ merchants with old artifacts from the jungle where lost Arlathan lies, in the north on the coast. It is too close to Tevinter for any of The People to safely travel to, but when we took those artifacts back, there were some with writing. One or two letters looked like Justinian, but the rest were a mystery. Writing is just another thing they stole from us, _da'len_ , and it's part of our duty to steal it back."

"How am I supposed to practice it if there's nothing for me to read?"

"I will write out the old stories for you," she told him. "That is how it is taught to the children in the clans. We may learn to _speak_ Trade, but we learn to write in Justinian, not common. Now pay attention. The letters go in a different order in Justinian, and you write them a different way- right to left or top to bottom-"

* * *

The leftover fruits and cold meats from the Summer Lily's provided food for the clients disappeared from their table the week after Satheraan turned eight.

"The others could use them more," Tanis told her, and when Nehna asked about it. "And you should have seen the brothel master's _face_ when I didn't take any this morning. He already owns everything else in this place- we should be able to control our own food."

The silver that had used to go to the brandy went for red meat and fruit from the market to add to the usual bread and vegetables and fish; and a month later Nehna woke up and realized she was weak and exhausted but _not in pain._ Her usual cup of herb-infused brandy was sitting by the bed but she ignored it and got up and went to the kitchen, forcing herself to take as much food to the table as she could before true exhaustion hit. She only let herself sit down when she was on the very edge of her energy, and started gorging. I had been so long since she'd been hungry.

Tanis wandered in sleepily to being making the evening meal half an hour later and froze in the doorway, staring. Nehna had devoured almost their entire stock of food, and what was left wasn't enough to cook with. She'd have to go shopping.

"I don't hurt!" Nehna told her. "I woke up and I didn't hurt and I was _hungry!_ "

Tanis stood there in shock a moment longer before lunging towards the table and kissing her. Nehna laughed into it and kissed her back, and that was how Satheraan found them.

" _Mamae_?"

"I'm going to be all right, _da'len_. Everything is going to be fine."

* * *

It took another month and a half to build up her stamina properly, and Nehna hated every second of the recovery. Every night she didn't go to work, Satheraan kept going in her place. One day halfway into the month, she left the Summer Lily for the first time in over a year and bought a large wooden cutting board in the market. She put it on a shelf across the room from her bed and dug out her throwing knives. When she was too tired to walk, or couldn't come up with the energy or willpower to get out of bed, she practiced her aim.

It made her feel a lot better. She thought that she'd kept it up even once she started working again.

The day she turned up at the brothel master's office and told him to put her on the work roster and take Satheraan _off_ for good was strange, uncomfortable pleasure. The man looked… _angry_ that she was coming back, and so Nehna held herself straight and tall and resisted the urge to pull out one of the knives she hadn't taken off and stick him with it for whoring out her son. There was nothing truly illegal in Antiva save crossing the Crows, but there were still things that would cause a neighborhood to rise and extract their own justice.

Some of the younger men and women surprised her in the hallway and took her off to Tanis's rooms, which were full of others foregoing some hours of sleep to celebrate her renewed health. It was touching, and Nehna gave in and accepted hugs and cheek kisses and basked in the happy atmosphere and the smell of Tanis's cooking.

She was helping take the food off the stove when someone screeched. Nehna tensed and almost burned her hand.

Tanis leaned in and whispered: _"Crow!"_

Nehna put the pan with the cooked fish down and turned. The Crow had climbed in the window and was seated on his haunches on top of Tanis's table.

Master Escipo.

He smiled blandly at the cold rage she wasn't even trying to hide.

"So we heard right," he said. "You're well enough to go back to work. A shame you took your son off. Courtesans are better the younger they start- he could be a noble's lover one day, if only you let him. He's already learned so much, and there was a definite improvement with practice."

Nehna went hot and cold all over. The room was dead silent.

"Oh, come now," Master Escipo said. "What did you _think_ he was going to end up doing with his life, living on the street? You should have let me take him and settled your debt, and then neither of you would be here. It's still an open offer. He's young enough to train and he's _certainly_ got the right dedication. And seduction is a practical-"

"I told you no eight years ago!" Nehna snarled.

"And five, six years from now?" Master Escipo shrugged. "He'll just be back downstairs for the nights again. He'll be old enough not to cause a stir and he'll be pretty. He'll have plenty of people paying for him, with your skin and his father's hair. Adan was pretty, t-"

The throwing knife Nehna had strapped to the inside of her right wrist sank into his throat, and he fell forward with a wet choking noise. It was a fatal wound, and he wasn't dead yet, and Nehna grabbed his arm and twisted when he tried to slash at her, forcing him onto his stomach. She knelt on top of him, trapping the arm she'd grabbed under her leg, and pulled his head back by his hair.

"Tanis," she said. "I need a bowl."

One was silently brought, and placed on the floor below Master Escipo's head.

Nehna reached around and grabbed the hilt of her throwing knife.

"No'one 'scapes t'Crows," Master Escipo gasped, and Nehna pulled her knife out so she could slit his throat with it. It was just like draining game in the clan, so they could be neatly skinned. She'd done it often as the first step in making leather.

It didn't take long for the Crow to die.

"Andraste preserve us," someone said very quietly, when Nehna let his head drop and Tanis took the bowl to the sink to wash out.

"He killed my husband, Ashera," Nehna told her, feeling very calm and distantly pleased. "Adan was a Crow, too; and these-"

She touched her _vallas'lin._

"-aren't for decoration. I know a lot about killing. This wasn't the first time."

No one else seemed to know how to react to that. Nehna cleaned her knife, stripped the dead Crow of his armor and weapons, and let those brave enough to pick through the rest of his things. She and Tanis dumped the body in the trash pile behind the Summer Lily, buried under the week's refuse, and then Nehna went back upstairs. Her knives and the Crow's armor and knives back into the bottom of her chest.

She scrubbed herself clean of blood and the stink of the trash, got into nice clothes, locked the door to Satheraan's room so no one could get in while she was gone, and went downstairs for the night's work.

* * *

The last memory she could find, when she woke up in a strange wooden room that was swaying nauseatingly, was the brothel master handing her a drink with her night's pay, _'in celebration of her health'_.

"We're on a ship," she heard Tanis, and searched the room for her. The woman was huddled in a corner, and looked like she'd been crying. "The brothel master, he- Nehna he _sold us._ There, there's this Orlesian chevalier who's been coming around the past couple of weeks-"

Nehna remembered him. He'd been one of her clients last night, and paid quite a lot to spend most of it with her.

"-and he, he really likes me and I guess he liked you too and that, that _shem'len-_ "

"Satheraan," Nehna realized, shooting up in bed. "Tanis, where's-"

"He kept him," Tanis told her. "He said what the chevalier paid for you and me, it was enough to get the Crows to leave him alone, and he kept Satheraan, I didn't even see him he just had the bouncer grab me when I tried to go back upstairs-"

She was a slave on a ship heading to Orlais and her son was at the mercy of the brothel. Nehna refused to cry.

No one could be vigilant all the time. If a Crow couldn't do it, some jumped-up Orlesian thug would be easy. There would be an opportunity, and she would strike, and then she would come back for Satheraan. They would leave the _shem'len_ for good, and he could grow up in The People.

 _We are Dalish, and never again shall we submit._


End file.
